Three of Hansen's Most Memorable Titles

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	• Skinflick, Gravedigger and Nightwork; Three Dave Brandstetter Mysteries Joseph Hansen Quality Paperback Book Club, 1992 average customer review:based on 1 review
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Three of Hansen's Most Memorable Titles

At one time The Los Angels Times described Joseph Hansen (1923-2004) as "the most exciting and effective writer of the classic California private-eye novel working today." Hansen's best-known works are a series of twelve novels written between 1970 and 1992 that feature insurance claims investigator Dave Brandstetter, a tough, no-nonsense detective--who also happens to be homosexual and is utterly unconcerned about that fact. These three frequently-collected titles represent Hansen working very close to the peak of his powers, combining a hard-driving prose with meticulously created characters, a remarkable sense of place, and unsavory plots that occasionally become too plausible for comfort. From pornography to toxic waste, these are very much "torn from the headlines" tales.

Originally published in 1979, SKINFLICK finds Brandstetter investigating the death of Gerald Dawson, a holier-than-thou Christian who doesn't stint at delivering "God's Justice" in vigilante style--and who is found with his neck broken in his own drive way. Pornography store owner Lon Tooker, whose shop was vandalized by Dawson and his cohorts, is the obvious suspect, but Brandstetter has his doubts, a missing teenage girl may hold the answers to his questions. This is, to my mind, the best of the three novels offered here: particularly dark, peopled with unlikely but completely believable characters, and showing Hansen's sharp style at its best.

Originally published in 1982 and 1984, GRAVEDIGGER and NIGHTWORK are only slightly less fine, with GRAVEDIGGER perhaps the more disconcerting of the two, with a plot that echos the infamous Manson murders. Brandstetter is employed to verify a life-insurance claim on Serenity Westover, a young woman who may or may not be dead and who may or may not have been murdered by a vicious cult leader with whom she was known to be involved in the years before her death. The already difficult case is further complicated by the claimant: her father, a disbarred attorney in desperate need of money who has gone mysteriously missing along with his son.

NIGHTWORK is perhaps Hansen's most obviously topical work. NIGHTWORK finds Brandstetter employed to investigate the death of Paul Meyers, an independent trucker whose firey death was first deemed an accidental crash but now looks very much like murder. Brandsetter is quickly involved in an unexpected array of witnesses and suspects: a faithless wife, an eccentric who spends his time watching his neighbors from a Victorian mansion, a black minister whose efforts at reaching out to gang members proves a miss-fire--and most particularly a mysterious woman known only as "Duchess" and a questionable detective named Smithers, who may or may not be involved in illegal toxic waste dumping.

All three novels feature the reoccuring character Amanda, Brandstetter's widowed step-mother who is in fact young enough to be his daughter; she plays a particularly significant role in GRAVEDIGGER. And both GRAVEDIGGER and NIGHTWORK feature Cecil, Brandstetter's lover and occasional working associate, who sometimes finds investigative work a bit too intense for his liking. Although I give the crown to SKINFLICK, all three novels are strong-arm page turners, and they should appeal to any fan of the hardboiled detective novel genre. Strongly recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

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