Top

We have updated our Privacy Policy Please take a moment to review it. By continuing to use this site, you agree to the terms of our updated Privacy Policy.

The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of

On sale

27th March 2014

Price: £5.99

Selected:  ebook / ISBN-13: 9781444784527

Disclosure: If you buy products using the retailer buttons above, we may earn a commission from the retailers you visit.

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

Dave Brandstetter stands alongside Philip Marlow Sam Spade and Lew Archer as one of the best fictional PIs in the business. Like them he was tough determined and ruthless when the case demanded it. Unlike them he was gay.

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.

Police Chief Ben Orton swore he’d keep ‘big city vice’ out of his town. So no one is too surprised when he turns up dead – but Dave thinks pinning his murder on gay activist Cliff Kerlee is just a bit too convenient. His investigation uncovers a community cowed by one man and a police force with its own ideas of law and order.

Reviews

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
Boston Globe
Hansen is a strong unflinching writer and everything in his taut prose is real
New Yorker
An excellent craftsman, a compelling writer, he has a real gift for storytelling - for character, for scene, for pace independent of violence
LA Times
The most exciting and effective writer of the classic private-eye novel working today
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
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