Description

‘After forty years, Hammett has a worthy successor’ The Times

Radio personality Fox Olsen seemed to have it all: devoted wife, adoring fans, perfect life. When his car is found crashed in a dry river bed, all of California mourns. But there is no body…

Insurance investigator Dave Brandstetter is hired to dig a little deeper. And the more he looks into Fox Olsen’s life, the more it seems as if he had good reason to disappear.

Fadeout is the first novel starring Dave Brandstetter – one of the best fictional PIs in the business, and one of the first ever gay ones. Joseph Hansen’s groundbreaking novels follow Brandstetter as he investigates cases in which motives are murky, passions run high, and nothing is ever as simple as it looks. Set in 1970s and 80s California, the series is a fascinating portrait of a time and a place, with mysteries to match Chandler and Macdonald.

Publisher Review

The Brandstetter books are classics of the private eye genre...it's great to see them available again -- Peter Robinson Incredible books, much overlooked -- Jeff Abbott, author of PANIC The most exciting and effective writer of the classic private-eye novel working today * LA Times * Hansen, one of the best practitioners of the California private-eye school...writes crisply with a lean, spare prose that echoes Hammett, Chandler and Macdonald * Washington Post * In Brandstetter, Hansen has developed a sympathetic character of depth and integrity * Chicago Sun-Times * No mystery writer is better at evoking the landscape, the light, the architecture and the ethnic diversity of Los Angeles * Time * Hansen is a strong unflinching writer and everything in his taut prose is real * Boston Globe * An exceptionally urbane literary style * New York Times Book Review * Hansen writes about Southern California with the descriptive love once given it by Raymond Chandler * Herald Examiner * An excellent craftsman, a compelling writer, he has a real gift for storytelling - for character, for scene, for pace independent of violence * New Yorker *