Joseph Hansen: Fadeout

Joseph Hansen ~ Fadeout (Book 1 of The Dave Brandstetter Mysteries)
From: No Exit Press

Dave Brandstetter is a Gay insurance claims investigator looking into the mysterious disappearance of Fox Olson which from the start looks like he staged his own death since the police can find no body. Despite Brandstetter’s almost paralyzing grief over the death of his lover of 22 years, Rod, he keeps himself together and goes in search of the truth.

Now, sitting lonely in the limp and faded blue corduroy bathrobe Rod had given him a dozen birthdays ago, sitting smoking a cigarette on the edge of one of the supersoft twin beds in the damp white room of the Pima Motor Inn, he reflected wryly that what they’d both been too young to know was the meaning of forever. It was what he’d tried to tell the girl in the car today.
How two people could wear on each other. In small ways. Little kid habits like Rod’s of leaving things, clothes he’d taken off, magazines he’d read, pans he’d cooked in, right where he’d dropped them. Of “forgetting” chores, the dirty dishes, the greasy stove, when it was his turn to do them. The look of wide-eyed hurt when Dave lost his temper and bawled him out. As if, he thought now, they’d meant anything, done or undone.
Rod had adored the loud, shiny, successful Broadway musicals. In record shops, while Dave sweated out a choice between Messiaen’s new Chronochromie and an E. Power Biggs Buxtehude organ recital, sure they couldn’t afford either, Rod, with cries of glee, would gather armloads of glittering original-cast albums. And play them, morning, noon and night, until Dave threatened to smash them over his head. For every recital of Schönberg songs or Gesualdo madrigals Dave took him to, Rod dragged Dave to half a dozen brassy Pajama Games, Gypsys, Most Happy Fellas, where Dave sat in the dark with clenched teeth, groaning for the end. Rod’s taste in films had been even worse. He’d worshiped a dim galaxy of minor screen queens, would sit up half the night in the blue glow of the television set enchanted by the tired wisecracks of Iris Adrian or Marie Windsor in forgotten RKO second features of the thirties. . . .
The cigarette was burning his fingers. He mashed it out in the ashtray and sighed grimly. He was thinking wrong again. Regretting again. Sorry for his sourness at Rod’s harmless games. Actually, he’d had fun out of them too because happiness with Rod splashed over. Less easy to understand was why Rod had put up with him. He had, after all, sat cheerfully through chamber music recitals Dave knew bored him, trudged amiably at Dave’s heels through long galleries of paintings and sculptures that meant nothing to him, listened while Dave read aloud articles on science and war and politics he didn’t grasp a tenth of, breathed quietly but awake through hours of static avant-garde films and ancient flickering Dreyer and Griffith classics, with never a murmur of protest. Murmur of protest, hell! With thanks, and with at least a try at talking about them sensibly. Joseph Hansen ~ Fadeout

Wow! OMG! Thank you Josh Lanyon!

I really like the Dave Brandstetter we meet who faces the same type of problems in this story I am sure many people including myself have had to face. Getting on with everything and struggling to keep a job and a professional business persona despite your private life going to hell in a proverbial hand basket. The book launches right into the meat of the Mystery with interview after interview and incident after incident concerning Fox Olson and why he might want to suddenly become dead or at least look it. Each person and their story is presented as a puzzle piece for you to play with and the way it all fits together is not all that easy to guess.

There is no indication while all of this is going on who Dave Brandstetter is or what he is feeling about it all. Just the ever present professionalism and cutting through the bullshit questions you come to enjoy about him. Then slowly you start getting these rare moments and glimpses of the real Dave dealing with his own demons and the hook is set and it draws you right on into the story.

I started racing through the “Mystery” parts to catch the next brief installment of “What is Dave gonna do to face these difficulties next?” “Who is Dave gonna wind up with at the end?” His real world expertise and professionalism is a mask hiding this broken Gay man so full of regrets and grief over the loss of his lover of 22 years. Wow, 22 years? Most Gay Lit up to this point would never ever show a main character so romantically conservative, so comfortable with being Gay, so FUCKING NORMAL!

Believe it or not there are even Gay people in this book that are not white or wealthy or even well endowed or good god… worried about being Gay. Imagine THAT! Not a single moment of the old Gay Lit Standard (IS THIS JUST A PHASE I AM GOING THROUGH?) are to be found in this book. No over the top “Campy Humor”, no “Expose” on the lives of those “depraved” Gay People who will kill themselves at the end of the book… promise.

AND THIS IS 1970!!! 19 *fucking* 70 PEOPLE!!! No wonder The Keepers Of The Gay Canon do not want to place this Gay Classic Mystery on the official list. It would set the bar so high that you would not see another Gay writer even coming close to this type of realistic tone or sedate style for another decade.

I mean just look at all the typical whiny, exploitive, self actualization crap masquerading as fiction I have read from 1970. The strange and somewhat violent and confused navel gazing of James Kirkwood Jr. with his P.S. Your Cat Is Dead which should have included whatever damn drug he was on when he wrote it.

Then there is Gordon Merrick and his The Lord Won’t Mind (But I sure as hell do!) with it’s ever increasing population of the type of Mythological Gay Literary Creeps I would come to loathe. Self Pitying, Trust Fund Sucking, White, Blond, Suntanned, Whimpering, Well Endowed, FREAKS FROM FUCKING HELL! Written by some low rent Danielle Steel wanna-be sending out missives to the unwashed from his “oh so trendy” Euro-Trash Greek Condo.

It amazes me people have the nerve to go all “Gay Lit Snob” about the continued popularity of the few and far between witty Gay writers like Amistead Maupin’s Tales Of The City and then totally over look (Because it is Genre?) or even worse not even know about more serious fare from writers like Joseph Hansen.

Josh Lanyon has recommended Joseph Hansen to me a number of times including in the interview LBea and I did with him on DIK. If you ever want to prove Da Pig don’t know everything just point to any conversation between me and Josh. Where my collection of Gay Literature zigs, his zags. Where I have read numerous Gay Studies and Memoirs he has read some of the best overlooked books in the Gay Mystery Genre out there. The best thing about it all is I get to learn something and boy did I learn something while reading Joseph Hansen’s first Brandstetter Mystery here. There was some damn good writing that I missed.

I have linked to some non-mainstream websites for this UK No Exit Press edition which seems to be harder to find in the US. That is sad because you get all the Dave Brandstetter books for one low $7.00 price which so rocks. Although the font that it ends up being printed with cries for an eBook Edition where you could switch up the size a bit.

Besides all that though you will be hard pressed to collect all of these books on their own since many are constantly going out of print and I have not seen any one publisher printing them all at the same time. They are perfect eBook size so maybe one of the ePublishers will get the rights and reprint them one day.

In The Complete Brandstetter Edition you get…

In order:
Fadeout (1970)
Death Claims (1973)
Troublemaker (1975)
The Man Everyone Was Afraid Of (1978)
Skinflick (1979)
Gravedigger (1982)
Nightwork (1984)
The Little Dog Laughed (1986)
Early Graves (1987)
Obedience (1988)
The Boy Who Was Buried This Morning (1990)
A Country of Old Men (1991)

I totally suggest you run, do not walk, and track down this Grade A with a big gold star set of Gay Murder Mysteries with Strong Romantic Elements while you wait for the next Josh Lanyon book to come out.

I sure as hell am enjoying it.

Tags: Dave Brandstetter Mysteries, Gay Romance, Grade A, Joseph Hansen, Mystery, No Exit Press