Books: A Country of Old Men by Joseph Hansen (1991)

“After twenty-one years on the detective beat, aging veteran P.I. Dave Brandstetter is finally going to get some rest--that is, after one last case. Even though he is no longer able to sprint after the bad guys like he used to, Brandstetter is not stopped from investigating this wild tale of kidnapping and murder told by a bruised and grubby little boy found wandering the beach alone. The police don't even believe the kid--just as they don't believe that the drug-related shooting death of a pop guitarist in anything out of the ordinary. So Dave is lured out of retirement to confront street drugs, powerful politicians, sleazy record executives, child abuse.and to unravel as snarled a tangle of carnage and deception as he's ever faced.”

The whodunit aspect of A Country of Old Men is a good one, filled with lots of twists and turns, and was the first where I figured out who the killer was before Dave. As the final book in the series, it also brings up Dave’s health issues, something that has always been there, hanging around the dark corners of the series narrative, and makes it more of a subplot than before. There is also another subplot involving some old school classmates, one who has become a novelist and has supposedly written a semi autobiographical tome, that has another classmate, now a rising conservative politician, all up in arms. I found that aspect less interesting, but that was all part of what is called a red herring in this genre. It serves as a distraction, but it’s more of a plot contrivance.  

Still, it’s an enjoyable book, filled with so many distrustful people, especially those who live between the darkness and the light. And Hansen’s Los Angeles is beautiful –well describe, from the smell, to the trees, to the stained concrete. But it’s certainly a Los Angeles that if it truly existed, has not for decades. But it remains a lonely place.

While there is a short story collection perhaps to acquire, as I neared the end of this book, it became obviously –just like the final Westlake book featuring John Dortmunder- hard to turn those final pages. As formulaic as these books can be, just like Westlake, you still want to savior every last sentence, paragraph, and chapter. These twelve titles, released over a twenty-one year period are just great thrillers with a compassionate, empathic gay hero who, despite his aging body and his family history, could never turn away anyone asking for help.

Books: The Boy Who Was Buried This Morning by Joseph Hansen (1990)

“Insurance investigator Dave Brandstetter has spent the last few years drifting in and out of retirement. For the sake of his boyfriend, Cecil, he has attempted to forgo dangerous jobs. But when a close friendʹs death sends Dave into a depressive funk, Cecil recognizes that work is the only cure. During a high-stakes paintball game, a hardcore supremacist gets hit by a very real bullet. Although the police claim the death was accidental -nothing but a stray round from a nearby hunting preserve- Dave knows that a man this hated seldom dies by chance. His investigation takes him into the strange world of make-believe war -a grown-up version of cowboys and Indians whose players sometimes have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. If Dave isnʹt careful, heʹll find himself stained with something more permanent than paint.”

The penultimate tale in the Brandesetter series, is one the better entries in the series. Like the others, what work here are the pacing and the fact each book makes Dave a little bit older, a little bit weary and little bit sad that friends and family are shuttling off this mortal coil. It’s a rarity in most genres, but especially the thriller/mystery series, for the hero to age with the passing years between titles. Also, by book eleven, Hansen has complete control of Dave and the other characters that populate the book, which offers a tightly paced thriller filled with some really bad people. And The Boy Who Was Buried This Morning, with its white supremacists, small-town narrow minded citizens, written nearly 34 years-ago, shows nothing has changed and really could be taking place in 2024. Example: “Whole United States feels the way I do, but they’ve been brainwashed by the liberal network TV traitors to where they’re afraid to speak out plainly.”

As always, there is a bit of weirdness of a plot convenience –that Cecil, a black man, would have been concerned with death of a man who was known to be racist. I’ve talked about Dave’s unwavering empathy, but while Cecil has shown some compassion, I question whether he would have enough feelings about racist dead man to involve his boyfriend in finding out who killed him.

Still, another satisfying book from Hansen, a great thriller with a prescient aspect that should appeal to many.

Books: Obedience By Joseph Hansen (1988)

“Well into middle age, Dave has decided to retire for the sake of Cecil, the young TV reporter who loves and cherishes him, and has too often risked his own life for Dave’s work. But retirement does not come easily. Dave never did it for the money. He always had that. Nor did he tirelessly work cases in hopes of chasing renown. It was always the pursuit of the truth that drove Dave. He enjoyed the truth’s habit of coming into direct conflict with bigotry, allowing him to surprise the small-minded along the way. It doesn’t take much arm twisting, then, to get Dave back in the saddle when an old friend in the public defender’s office asks him to help Andy Flanagan, a shiftless young man accused of murdering a Vietnamese businessman to defend the Old Fleet — a shantytown of houseboats that has been earmarked for development. Beneath the surface of this oil-slicked slum lurks an international conspiracy so appalling that Dave will regret postponing his retirement.”

As one review put it, "The One Where Dave Retires for 22 Hours." There are some interesting aspects to this tenth mystery featuring Dave Brandstetter. I’m not sure if it was the point, though. But there is a lot of bait and switching going on here, as well as some-clumsy-and-obvious-who’s-doing it attacks on Dave. The large cast of character also hinder Dave, as he tries to figure out the connections between a hit at a restaurant –possibly done by the gang Lord Don Pham- the murder of Le Van Minh –who could connected to the said crime lord- and what all of this has to do with the Old Fleet and the man arrested for the murder of Le. But in the end, I think Hansen is not interested in complicated plot, with rings with-in rings. It’s more about what people do when they’re stuck like a rat in the corner.

Hansen, as usual in his books, wonderfully describes the weather, the geography, exteriors and interiors, with just the right few words. The dialogue easily moves the story along. The other nice thing here, as I noted last book, is how Hansen is allowing Dave to age. This was something Westlake sort of avoided with his Dortmunder titles, even as he added more modern technology (at the time the book was written) to be folded into the books.

Books: Early Graves By Joseph Hansen (1987)

“Dave Brandstetter's afternoon does not begin well: his ex-boyfriend picks him up at the airport, and the ride home — in bumper-to-bumper Los Angeles traffic — is one long argument between them. The insurance investigator's day gets worse when he finds a man — bloody, rain-soaked, and ice cold — lying on his porch, killed by a stab wound while Dave was out of town. There is a serial killer loose in Los Angeles, and this man is his sixth victim. Like the others, he had already been marked for death – by the unforgiving plague known as AIDS. Someone is targeting sick men in the city, and Dave's search for the killer leads him into the dark side of gay Los Angeles, where death comes without warning and life is a fearful dream.”

For the ninth book in this excellent series, Hansen folds the AIDS crisis of the 1980s into the narrative. I suppose, it was just a matter of time, considering the setting of these novels and the fact that Dave is an openly gay, yet “straight” appearing investigator. Because Hansen lived through this era, he takes a very brutal look at the epidemic, as he details the thousands of young men who are infected with HIV and growing homophobia and outright hatred gay men suffered during the period. It has a sometime unvarnished truth about it, with the squalid and sad life of those who were impacted the most, but as always, Dave remains honest, emphatic and loving.

The mystery, of course, is a bit low key in some way, as Dave’s investigation is personal. It’s also a bit of bait and switch, with your typical red herrings of the genre. Still, this books moves swiftly and you get a cast of interesting, sometimes horrible, characters, both old and new.

The only silly part –Hansen is seemly a great set-up artist and then the tales sort of go into weird, unbelievable mode towards the end- is his ongoing relationship with Cecil. I don’t think Hansen nailed down Dave’s birthday (though if I was to use Hansen’s birth year, Dave would be 63-64 in 1987), but it’s clear Dave is well into his 50s and Cecil is twenty-five. Anyways, Brandstetter's relationship with the boyfriend has hit a bump because Cecil went a little overboard by marrying a blind girl he thought he could help (those events were chronicled in the last book, The Little Dog Laughed). Here, a few months later, Dave is missing Cecil and our young cub reporter feels stuck, but because he’s honorable, he can’t see a way out. But all of this is resolved in the final pages, in a weird, deus ex machine writers (or publishers?) choice. It’s just too convenient, I guess.

But the book adds a blunt feeling of dread over these young men, adding a bleak and the sometimes horrible inaction of people and government during one of the darkest health crises of the latter half of the 20^th Century.

Books: The Little Dog Laughed By Joseph Hansen (1986)

“Journalist Adam Streeter covered some of the most dangerous stories of the last quarter century, ranging from Cambodia to Siberia and anywhere troubled in between. Fearless, dashing, and more than a little resourceful, Streeter was renowned as much for his virtuosic writing as the shocking reality of what he uncovered along the way. Why would someone who lived so purposefully and with such demonstrable bravery turn a pistol on himself? Insurance investigator Dave Brandstetter has seen enough suicides to know this isn’t one. Suspecting treachery, he digs into Adam's last story — an unpublished investigation into the whereabouts of a vanished South American strongman, called El Carnicero, the Butcher — and finds that Adam's death shows every hallmark of his bloody style. Dave quickly realized that some very powerful people would like him to drop the case. Dave’s own lover, Cecil, would like to see him take it easy for once. But Cecil knows Brandstetter is not so unlike the man whose death he’s investigating. The truth, to someone like Brandstetter or Streeter, is worth the ultimate price. As he attempts to finish Adam’s story and get to the bottom of the journalist’s death, Dave will find more than a few people willing to make him pay it.”

For the eighth book in this series, we get a little parallel 1980s tale of fictional South American rebels, ala El Salvador and certain American semi-retired military men (Oliver North, maybe) who want to overthrow governments without Washington DC getting their hands dirty. It’s a bit far-fetched that an insurance investigator would somehow get involved in such plot and you have to suspend some disbelief during the last sixty pages or so. Not sure why Hansen chose this plot, beyond, maybe trying to say something about what the Reagan Administration did during that period. But the political and military issue he tries to cover here is reminder that as a series of books ages, sometimes the writer gets in over his head.

It’s still worth the read, though. Dave remains a compassionate, very empathic character and you sense he truly wants to help the underdogs here. The first half is a great mystery, very Westlake in some aspects. These later books are also, seemly, getting less gay. I mean, Dave’s relationship with Cecil is still there, but Hansen seemly is putting it in the background more and more. They do make a perfect team, and after the Marines show up at the end, with Cecil leading the rescue, I hope the final four books in this series address this more.