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Death Claims

On sale

12th February 2015

Price: £9.99

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Selected: Paperback / ISBN-13: 9781444784497

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John Oats is dead: drowned in the treacherous waves of the Pacific. He was in great pain, and reliant on morphine; it could easily have been accident or suicide.

But with thousands of dollars in insurance at stake, on a policy which the dead man had meant to change the day he died, Dave Brandstetter thinks it was murder. And between the mysteriously absent son, the bitter ex-wife and the current lover, there are plenty of people with reason to lie to Dave about what really happened that night. And why…

Death Claims is the second Dave Brandstetter novel – 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.

Reviews

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