The little dog laughed : a Dave Brandstetter novel | Collections | The Huntington

The little dog laughed : a Dave Brandstetter novel | Collections | The Huntington

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Skinflick : a Dave Brandstetter novel
Rare Books
"Lon Tooker certainly fits the profile: big, strong, a Marine Corps veteran, and recently the target of evangelical crusader Gerald Dawson's wrath. Tooker's adult toys and pornography store on the local skid row has recently become the target of Dawson's church men's group and their destructive masked raids on 'un-Christian' businesses. When Dawson is strangled to death by someone of Tooker's size and ability, the police see a smut-peddler with a motive. Case closed. Death claims investigator Dave Brandstetter doesn't like it. By all accounts Tooker is a softy incapable of such a crime. Actual evidence is nonexistent and assumptions many. And Dave particularly doesn't care for assumptions based on someone's sex life. But Dave is also navigating new personal territory. His father's death has left him bereaved and for the first time in a long time without a job. Dave quit the insurance company his father built and has struck out on his own as a private investigator. Add in his breakup with his recent partner and he's a man unencumbered. It's the late 1970s and Dave may be aging a bit but he's still handsome, wealthy, and recently in possession of a new convertible Triumph. Looks like it's not all hard work"--Back cover.
642328
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Death claims : a Dave Brandstetter novel
Rare Books
"Since a burning accident that left him painfully disfigured, John Oats, a well-liked collectible book dealer, has been self-isolating at his beach house in Arena Blanca, California. An avid swimmer, John Oats had taken to night swimming to hide his injuries from daytime beachgoers. When his body is found one morning smashed against the rocks at the treacherous point near the house, the authorities rule it 'Death by Misadventure.' Insurance companies don't much care for verdicts like that and therefore Medallion Insurance, the policy holder for Oats's substantial life insurance policy, sends out its best investigator, Dave Brandstetter, to poke holes in the story. The night Oats died there was a dangerous storm along the coast, and Brandstetter finds it hard to believe that the bookseller, a lifelong swimmer, would have gone out. As his investigation reveals more of John Oats's sad story Brandstetter learns that the motives for murder are many. But Brandstetter has his own problems to deal with. Still mourning the death of his partner, Rod, Dave is navigating his own twilight world of grief. His new lover, Doug, is also grieving, and the two men must come to a reckoning of whether their love is an ersatz stand-in for their lost partners or something more"--Back cover.
642325
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Troublemaker : a Dave Brandstetter novel
Rare Books
"Rick Wendell wouldn't hurt a flea. The big, jovial owner of the Hang Ten, a surfing-themed gay bay [that is, bar] on the boardwalk, was loved by regulars and new arrivals alike. But Rick was found naked and dead, with a local hustler named Larry Johns standing over him, smoking gun in hand. Wendell's death is ruled as a homicide and Johns is arrested. Everyone thinks it's a simple open-and-shut case. Everyone except the death claims investigator, Dave Brandstetter. Brandstetter, a homosexual himself, doesn't make the same assumptions about the crime scene and easy story it tells. Larry Johns had enough time to escape had he wanted to. Not to mention Johns lacked any discernable motive, especially since the $200 in Wendell's wallet was left untouched. In an investigation that takes him from sun-scorched hillside ranches to seedy boardwalk bars, Brandstetter gets to the bottom of a twisty mystery in this hardboiled and entertaining portrait of the '70s gay culture by groundbreaking poet and award-winning crime writer Joseph Hansen"--Back cover.
642326
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The boy who was buried this morning : a Dave Brandstetter novel
Rare Books
"The loss of a dear friend has retired P.I. Dave Brandstetter in a funk. The 1980s haven't been kind to Los Angeles, either, and the city Dave loves seems to be vanishing before his eyes. Dave isn't getting any younger, and his boyfriend, Cecil, is happy to see Dave's days of working dangerous jobs behind him. But Cecil also recognizes that work may be the investigator's best way out of his recent depression. When a former work colleague of Cecil's is shot by a live round at a paintball park in rural Southern California, he decides to encourage Dave to look into it. The deceased wasn't exactly someone Cecil or Dave would mourn. Vaughn Thomas was a troubled young man; a silver spoon elite who dabbled in militias and weekend warrior games while cultivating his connections with fellow white supremacists. Vaughn would have hated everything about Dave and Cecil, but it doesn't take long for the old investigator to see that the official story is anything but right. 'Emotions doesn't change facts,' Dave once told Cecil, but as Dave dips his toes deeper into the case, he quickly realizes that facts have a hard time with bigotry and bullets"--Back cover.
642334
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Early graves : a Dave Brandstetter novel
Rare Books
"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. Decades after its original publication in 1987, Early Graves remains an important literary achievement. The exigence of Joseph Hansen's frontline reportage of the AIDS epidemic is as powerful as his prose craft and mystery plot are clever"--Back cover.
642332
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Obedience : a Dave Brandstetter novel
Rare Books
"As an insurance investigator, Dave Brandstetter built a reputation unraveling suspicious deaths. Now, well into middle age, he 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"--Back cover.
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