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hoomaigat's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
ohyeaethan's review
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
tcu_reads's review
5.0
I was feeling very average about this until half way through and then I feel like there were enough twists and turns to make it a solid mystery and a really great read. Gays in 70's literature hell yeah
ndizz87's review against another edition
4.0
This is the first queer detective novel that I’ve read. I found both the writing style, our hero, and the story to be quite intriguing. It harkens back to the hardboiled noir mysteries of the early twentieth century while set in the swinging ‘60s, but being written in the hardened ‘70s. Our hypermasculine, yet damaged protagonist Dave Brandstetter was an enigma of a man to spend a novel with. That I appreciated. In terms of the story there were at least two consecutive twists that really sustained me up until the ending, which fell rather flat and I lost some steam. However, I felt the writing and our hero were enough to keep this reader engaged nearly the entire time.
Dave Brandstetter is an investigator working for his father’s insurance company. He arrives in Pima, California to investigate the supposed death of a newly minted celebrity in the community, Fox Olson. Olson’s car veered off a bridge into an arroyo during a torrential flood. The police found the car, but no body. As Brandstetter works his way through the community, speaking with Olson’s widow, his daughter, the radio station manager where Olson worked, and others he comes to the conclusion that this supposed open and shut case is far from it. While attempting to get to the bottom of this mystery, Brandstetter deals with the fallout from his longtime lover’s recent death and how he’ll move forward.
Brandstetter as a character is somewhat complicated by the author’s binary understanding of masculinity when it comes to queer men. Descriptions of both Brandstetter and his deceased longtime lover, Rod, are written in a juxtaposing manner which is definitely a product of its time. Hansen wants you to see Brandstetter as this gritty, hypermasculine detective that just so happens to be homosexual. He’s a hardboiled, chain smoking, whiskey drinking man’s man who just so happened to have a twenty year relationship with another man. The way he’s portrayed, I couldn’t shake the images of Humphrey Bogart’s character, Sam Spade, in The Maltese Falcon. His deceased lover Rod, on the other hand, was described in such flagrant terms as a queeny, flamboyant interior designer. You can feel how Brandstetter looked down on this ‘type’ of homosexual, even though he carried on a multi-decade relationship with him. It sounded as though Rod ‘wore him down’ and then he chose to ignore those aspects of his character, which was a little disappointing. Again, it’s a product of a different age because it certainly leaves no room for the spectrum of masculinity we now understand in today’s age.
One aside I just have to get out: Why on earth did he name the character Dave? I mean, you have other amazing characters with really interesting names: Thorne, Hale, Fox, Anselmo, etc. And you end up naming the character that’s going to be in multiple novels Dave? Seriously…
One thing that surprised me was the writing style. I’m not one who loves minimalism. I’d much prefer to read Woolf over Hemingway, but in this novel it just works. The very sparse wording almost feels like incomplete sentences, which at times in itself felt like a mystery. I felt as though I had to piece the sentences together to solve the mystery of what was missing. I believe this is where most of the vibes of the early noir novels came from, which I really appreciated.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how groundbreaking this novel really was. Regardless of the binary ideas of queer men that this novel protrays, you have to give it credit for what else it does for the queer community. This is a story of a man being unapologetically queer in a time that was not condusive to it, to say the least. He held a twenty year relationship with another man. He’s openly gay to his father and yet they still have a relationship. While he doesn’t share his status with the world, he does so when he needs to. He even stands up for queer men, like in the scene with Hale McNeil as he trash talks his son and other homosexuals. I have to admit, when I think back on it, there is a lot there that makes me proud and also gobsmacked that it ever found a publisher, let alone became a series of detective novels in the 1970s.
The plot itself held me, mostly, until the final third of the novel. The mystery of whether Fox was dead, unfolding Fox’s history, his relationship with someone who supposedly died in the war but was scene in Pima just a few weeks ago, suddenly finding Fox’s body with a bullet hole in it…it was all a very twisty, tangled mess that I kept me intrigued. On top of that you add the layer of Thorne’s affair with Hale, mayor Chalmers’ blackmailing, and Loomis’ deadly intervention, Fox’s fight with Doug…I wasn’t sure who would end up being the one that put a bullet through Fox’s heart. I was hoping for a crescendo at the end, but instead I got a rather deflated final ‘gotcha’ moment that I felt didn’t I had enough of the clues to put together myself. For me, a good mystery gives you all the clues and if it stumps you, then you just didn’t put them together in the right way. This didn’t feel like that so by the time we figured out that it was Phil Mundy because he needed the insurance money due to the fact he was stealing from Chalmers’ construction company…it was just meh for me.
While there may be some issues with a binary view of queer men that is completely a product of its time and a deflated ending to the mystery that kept me in suspense up until the final third of the novel, there was such good writing and an intriguing enough character to make me add the next two Brandstetter mysteries to my reading list next year. I’m glad they republished these. As you read them you get a sense of the boldness and the ground that this novel broke. I’m sorry I didn’t hear of these novels sooner, but now that they’ve been republished my hope is that I’m not the only one who wants to follow Brandstetter around as he solves these hard boiled mysteries.
Dave Brandstetter is an investigator working for his father’s insurance company. He arrives in Pima, California to investigate the supposed death of a newly minted celebrity in the community, Fox Olson. Olson’s car veered off a bridge into an arroyo during a torrential flood. The police found the car, but no body. As Brandstetter works his way through the community, speaking with Olson’s widow, his daughter, the radio station manager where Olson worked, and others he comes to the conclusion that this supposed open and shut case is far from it. While attempting to get to the bottom of this mystery, Brandstetter deals with the fallout from his longtime lover’s recent death and how he’ll move forward.
Brandstetter as a character is somewhat complicated by the author’s binary understanding of masculinity when it comes to queer men. Descriptions of both Brandstetter and his deceased longtime lover, Rod, are written in a juxtaposing manner which is definitely a product of its time. Hansen wants you to see Brandstetter as this gritty, hypermasculine detective that just so happens to be homosexual. He’s a hardboiled, chain smoking, whiskey drinking man’s man who just so happened to have a twenty year relationship with another man. The way he’s portrayed, I couldn’t shake the images of Humphrey Bogart’s character, Sam Spade, in The Maltese Falcon. His deceased lover Rod, on the other hand, was described in such flagrant terms as a queeny, flamboyant interior designer. You can feel how Brandstetter looked down on this ‘type’ of homosexual, even though he carried on a multi-decade relationship with him. It sounded as though Rod ‘wore him down’ and then he chose to ignore those aspects of his character, which was a little disappointing. Again, it’s a product of a different age because it certainly leaves no room for the spectrum of masculinity we now understand in today’s age.
One aside I just have to get out: Why on earth did he name the character Dave? I mean, you have other amazing characters with really interesting names: Thorne, Hale, Fox, Anselmo, etc. And you end up naming the character that’s going to be in multiple novels Dave? Seriously…
One thing that surprised me was the writing style. I’m not one who loves minimalism. I’d much prefer to read Woolf over Hemingway, but in this novel it just works. The very sparse wording almost feels like incomplete sentences, which at times in itself felt like a mystery. I felt as though I had to piece the sentences together to solve the mystery of what was missing. I believe this is where most of the vibes of the early noir novels came from, which I really appreciated.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how groundbreaking this novel really was. Regardless of the binary ideas of queer men that this novel protrays, you have to give it credit for what else it does for the queer community. This is a story of a man being unapologetically queer in a time that was not condusive to it, to say the least. He held a twenty year relationship with another man. He’s openly gay to his father and yet they still have a relationship. While he doesn’t share his status with the world, he does so when he needs to. He even stands up for queer men, like in the scene with Hale McNeil as he trash talks his son and other homosexuals. I have to admit, when I think back on it, there is a lot there that makes me proud and also gobsmacked that it ever found a publisher, let alone became a series of detective novels in the 1970s.
The plot itself held me, mostly, until the final third of the novel. The mystery of whether Fox was dead, unfolding Fox’s history, his relationship with someone who supposedly died in the war but was scene in Pima just a few weeks ago, suddenly finding Fox’s body with a bullet hole in it…it was all a very twisty, tangled mess that I kept me intrigued. On top of that you add the layer of Thorne’s affair with Hale, mayor Chalmers’ blackmailing, and Loomis’ deadly intervention, Fox’s fight with Doug…I wasn’t sure who would end up being the one that put a bullet through Fox’s heart. I was hoping for a crescendo at the end, but instead I got a rather deflated final ‘gotcha’ moment that I felt didn’t I had enough of the clues to put together myself. For me, a good mystery gives you all the clues and if it stumps you, then you just didn’t put them together in the right way. This didn’t feel like that so by the time we figured out that it was Phil Mundy because he needed the insurance money due to the fact he was stealing from Chalmers’ construction company…it was just meh for me.
While there may be some issues with a binary view of queer men that is completely a product of its time and a deflated ending to the mystery that kept me in suspense up until the final third of the novel, there was such good writing and an intriguing enough character to make me add the next two Brandstetter mysteries to my reading list next year. I’m glad they republished these. As you read them you get a sense of the boldness and the ground that this novel broke. I’m sorry I didn’t hear of these novels sooner, but now that they’ve been republished my hope is that I’m not the only one who wants to follow Brandstetter around as he solves these hard boiled mysteries.
the_gare_bear's review
3.0
I really enjoyed this novel. It's fascinating to me to read something that came out in 1970 that had gay themes in it.
The novel itself was a great story. I did find at the end of the novel things seemed to be a little cramped and feel like it was trying to tie up loose ends very quickly. The other couple of issues I had were also how the book was written. It seemed to jump a lot between scenarios and people when they take place so I felt sometimes it's hard to keep up with who you are reading about. I also felt like that there was A LOT of characters in this book and it was hard to keep track of them all and how they connected to the story.
All in all it was a good read and had me guessing. Just some minor tweaks would have me giving this book a higher rating.
The novel itself was a great story. I did find at the end of the novel things seemed to be a little cramped and feel like it was trying to tie up loose ends very quickly. The other couple of issues I had were also how the book was written. It seemed to jump a lot between scenarios and people when they take place so I felt sometimes it's hard to keep up with who you are reading about. I also felt like that there was A LOT of characters in this book and it was hard to keep track of them all and how they connected to the story.
All in all it was a good read and had me guessing. Just some minor tweaks would have me giving this book a higher rating.
tataro's review
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
I believe this book, while ground-breaking for its time, has definitely aged. The mystery aspect is impeccable, with David Brandstetter being your typical old and gruff, yet seasoned, investigator. In terms of mystery, I found the reveal to be alright, but the clues leading up to the reveal were definitely suspenseful.
In terms of gay representation, well, it's certainly a representation. Considering the time this came out, the politics and dynamics of gay relationships makes sense. I did find it uncomfortable that David literally watched a kid grow up from birth to 17 years old and then proceeded to sleep with him. David seems to be the type to like younger gays, which is typically of people his age. I understand that in those times it was more common due to older gays losing that part of their youth and they sleep with younger gays to get that feeling back, but it still doesn't make it less weird.
I hope that David Brandstetter was a beacon of hope for gays at the time of the books release. That gay people could be more than just stereotypes, but I also think it's good to view these books within their time of release, as well as in the context of contemporary politics and culture.
I hope that David Brandstetter was a beacon of hope for gays at the time of the books release. That gay people could be more than just stereotypes, but I also think it's good to view these books within their time of release, as well as in the context of contemporary politics and culture.
young_neil_'s review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
rennyzenny's review
adventurous
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
The prose in this book is so old school black and white mystery novel and is so so delicious, brandstetter is the gay detective I knew I needed and have finally found, excited to read more of this series