Troublemaker
On sale
12th March 2015
Price: £9.99
‘After forty years, Hammett has a worthy successor’ The Times
Rick Wendell never made an enemy in his life, but he died all the same; and Larry Johns was found standing over him with the gun in his hand still smoking.
But Dave Brandstetter, who doesn’t share the police’s prejudice about Wendell’s lifestyle, can’t see it as an open-and-shut case. What was Johns’ motive? What happened to the cash Wendell withdrew that day? As he asks the questions no one wants to hear, he comes to realise the danger of assumptions – particularly where love and money are involved.
Troublemaker is the third 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.
Rick Wendell never made an enemy in his life, but he died all the same; and Larry Johns was found standing over him with the gun in his hand still smoking.
But Dave Brandstetter, who doesn’t share the police’s prejudice about Wendell’s lifestyle, can’t see it as an open-and-shut case. What was Johns’ motive? What happened to the cash Wendell withdrew that day? As he asks the questions no one wants to hear, he comes to realise the danger of assumptions – particularly where love and money are involved.
Troublemaker is the third 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.
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Reviews
The most exciting and effective writer of the classic private-eye novel working today
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
In Brandstetter, Hansen has developed a sympathetic character of depth and integrity
No mystery writer is better at evoking the landscape, the light, the architecture and the ethnic diversity of Los Angeles
Hansen is a strong unflinching writer and everything in his taut prose is real
An exceptionally urbane literary style
Hansen writes about Southern California with the descriptive love once given it by Raymond Chandler
An excellent craftsman, a compelling writer, he has a real gift for storytelling - for character, for scene, for pace independent of violence
The Brandstetter books are classics of the private eye genre...it's great to see them available again
Incredible books, much overlooked
