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.

Books: The Vesuvius Club By Mark Gatiss (2004)

“Meet Lucifer Box: Lucifer has a charming countenance and rapier wit that make him the guest all hostesses must have. And most do. But few of his conquests know that Lucifer is also His Majesty's most daring secret agent, at home in both London's Imperial grandeur and in its underworld of despicable vice. So when Britain's most prominent scientists begin turning up dead, there is only one man his country can turn to for help. Following a dinnertime assassination, Lucifer is dispatched to uncover the whereabouts of missing agent Jocelyn Poop. Along the way he will give art lessons, be attacked by a poisonous centipede, bed a few choice specimens, and travel to Italy on business and pleasure. Aided by his henchwoman Delilah; the beautiful, mysterious, and Dutch Miss Bella Pok; his boss, a dwarf who takes meetings in a lavatory; grizzled vulcanologist Emmanuel Quibble; and the impertinent, delicious, right-hand-boy Charlie Jackpot, Lucifer Box deduces and seduces his way from his elegant townhouse at Number 9 Downing Street (somebody has to live there) to the ruined city of Pompeii, to infiltrate a highly dangerous secret society that may hold the fate of the world in its clawlike grip.”

Much of this novel by Mark Gatiss’(best known as a member of the comedy team The League of Gentlemen, and has both written for and acted in the TV series Doctor Who and Sherlock) plays out like a mash-up of Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Who, and James Bond. It’s a cheeky send-up of all of them, with outrageous plotting, quips galore and a villain out to destroy Naples via a volcano. Lucifer Box is a decadent Edwardian gentleman, young, handsome, charming, and with a pronounced sardonic sense of humor.

While I enjoyed it somewhat, it is entertaining, but your mileage may vary how much a parody you can handle in this somewhat short novel (the first of three tales). It’s not fully satire, something the British are rather good at, and it reminded me at times of Mike Myers Austin Powers character, and it’s not subtle, but overall, more fun than I hoped for.

Books: A Peculiar Peril By Jeff VanderMeer (2020)

"After Jonathan Lambshead’s elusive grandfather dies, the recently orphaned teenager inherits the family mansion—and its contents. Jonathan soon discovers that the mansion’s basement holds more than just oddities: three doors serve as portals, with one leading to an alt-Earth called Aurora, where magic abounds, history has been re-written, and an occult dictator called Aleister Crowley leads an army pillaging alt-Europe. Jonathan learns of his destiny as a member of The Order, a secret society devoted to keeping our world separate from Aurora, and embarks on an epic quest to protect Earth from Crowley’s dark magic."

Can’t say I actually liked this book. I found it tedious, bloated, even when I found it clever and sometimes funny here and there. Still, I could not get over the ludicrous prose style and its (seemly) drug-fueled hallucinogenic plot that seemly wanted to emulate Charles Dickens worst aspects. By setting it in an alternate universe –the magic door portal trope- of Aurora, VanderMeer’s tale gets odder and weirder, but much of this 600 plus page novel for Young Adults could’ve been trimmed or spread over a trilogy instead of what seems to be a duology. And maybe had it been this way, the books faults would not be so obvious to me.

The verbose style was just too dense for me and it made me wonder how a teenager today, brought up on TikTok, Instagram, and ignoring their parents, would feel about it, because it felt like a real chore to finish it.

The fact it took me nearly a month to get through this book, even skimming through the last 35%, speaks volumes on how I’ll probably not read the second book when its released. This is real problem I have with the fantasy genre of the last two decades or so, where we get super long books for no real reason, where the editors are allowing the writers too much latitude, and then get to the point of that book, only to end it and ask the reader to return a year or so later for another huge tome.

So I'm left wondering, sadly what was the point of it all?