A Country of Old Men

by Joseph Hansen

Overview

Dave Brandstetter’s best days are behind him, but for the sake of a frightened child, Dave takes on his very last case.

The wear and tear of a life spent pursuing the truth into harm’s way is catching up with Dave. In fact, it has already caught him. The aged death claims investigator is old enough for his body to hurt even without all the compiled injuries he’s sustained throughout his career. Yet when presented with a puzzle-like mystery, Dave can’t help but be drawn in.

Walking on the beach, a friend finds a bedraggled child who claims he has witnessed a murder. The victim is a drug-addicted pop star, and the obvious suspect is the dead man’s ex-girlfriend—a drug addict whom the child saw standing over the body, gun in hand. In the final installment of Joseph Hansen’s groundbreaking series, Dave looks for justice once more, hoping that he will also find a lasting measure of peace.

Over the course of twelve novels spanning four decades of American culture—from the 1960s to the late 1980s—Joseph Hansen gave readers one of the truly great heroes of detective fiction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681990699
Publisher:	Soho Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	12/19/2023
Series:	A Dave Brandstetter Mystery , #12
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	86,331
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.48(h) x 0.51(d)

About the Author

Joseph Hansen (1923–2004) was the author of more than twenty-five novels, including the twelve groundbreaking Dave Brandstetter mystery novels. The winner of the 1992 Lifetime AchievementAward from the Private Eye Writers of America, Hansen was also the author of A Smile in His Lifetime, Living Upstairs, Job's Year, and Bohannon's Country. He was a two-time Lambda LiteraryAward-winner.

Editorial Reviews

PRAISE FOR THE DAVE BRANDSTETTER NOVELS

"In Brandstetter, Hansen has created a hero worthy of such predecessors as Chandler's Philip Marlowe and Macdonald's Lew Archer... Book after book, we're happy to walk down the mean streets in his company."
—John Powers, NPR's Fresh Air

"In an auspicious event for mystery readers, Syndicate is reprinting all 12 of Joseph Hansen’s pioneering Dave Brandstetter novels over 12 months. Fadeout, the first in the series featuring the comfortably gay World War II vet and L.A. insurance investigator, was published in 1970. As Michael Nava points out in his insightful new introduction, that’s when gay sex was a criminal act in 49 of the 50 states. Through grit and sheer talent, Hansen found a wide audience… Crime fiction fans who don’t know Hansen’s work are in for a treat."
—The Washington Post

“Joseph Hansen is not only one of America’s best mystery writers, he is a great American writer. Period. Full stop.”
—Michael Nava

"I can only applaud the republication of Joseph Hansen's Dave Brandstetter books. I've increasingly come to regard the phrase 'an important writer of crime fiction' as oxymoronic, but if one's going to use the label, Hansen's not an unreasonable bearer of it."
—Lawrence Block

“Incredible books, much overlooked.”
—Jeff Abbott
 
"The Brandstetter books are classics of the private eye genre... It's great to see them available again."
—Peter Robinson

“First published over fifty years ago now, Hansen’s novels are not just clever and compelling stories, but to my mind they are also a feat of incredible bravery. I wish I’d discovered him sooner.”
—Russ Thomas, CrimeReads
 
“Hansen is one of the best we have… [He] knows how to tell a tough, unsentimental, fast-moving story in an exceptionally urbane literary style.”
—New York Times Book Review
 
“After forty years, Hammett has a worthy successor.”
—The Times (London)
 
“Mr. Hansen is an excellent craftsman, a compelling writer.”
—The New Yorker
 
“Apart from its virtues as fiction, Hansen’s Early Graves is a field correspondent’s breathtaking dispatch from a community in the midst of disaster.”
—Time
 
“Read in the order written, [the Brandstetter mysteries] are remarkably linked through symbol, incident, and character, to the point that one sees them as a single, multi-volume novel, by which one may learn a great deal about what it means to be homosexual and male in modern America.”
—The New Republic
 
“Hansen is quite simply the most exciting and effective writer of the classic California private-eye novel working today.”
—Los Angeles Times
 
“No one in the history of the detective novel has had the daring to do what Joseph Hansen has done: make his private eye a homosexual…who is both a first-rate investigator and one of the most interest series characters in the history of the genre.”
—David Geherin, The American Private Eye

“The first thing I ever read by Joseph Hansen was Fadeout (1970). It’s the seminal novel in a mystery series about a smart, tough, uncompromising insurance investigator by the name of David Brandstetter. He is a Korean War vet and ruggedly masculine. He’s educated, principled, compassionate — but willing and able to use violence when nothing else works. He represents the (then) new breed of PI — the post–World War II private investigator. There are no bottles of rye in Dave’s desk, there are no sleazy secrets in his past, and the dames don’t much tend to throw themselves at him. He is neither tarnished nor afraid. Oh, and one other thing. He’s gay…. He was not the first gay detective to hit mainstream crime fiction, but he was the first normal gay detective, and that — as the poet said — has made all the difference.”
—Josh Lanyon, from The Golden Age of Gay Fiction

From the Publisher

Fans of Hansen's spare style and wit, refined in the 11 titles from Fadeout to The Boy Who Was Buried This Morning , will mourn if this bears out its subtitle, The Last Dave Brandstetter Mystery . Ex-insurance claims investigator Brandstetter, in his 60s now, is lured out of retirement by an old friend who's found an abused little boy on her beach with a story that hints at murder. It turns out that the boy was kidnapped by a young woman who may have witnessed the murder of her ex-lover. She's a suspect, but there are others: the boy's father, the young woman's father, her current lover. Brandstetter's dogged work uncovers the surprising villain after an enjoyable tour of an L.A. peopled with colorful characters. The subplot involves the memoirs of Dave's high school pal, which worry some ``respectable'' classmates. Hansen's lean style is true to the hard-boiled school and his matter-of-fact approach to Brandstetter's homosexuality is still refreshing. The final scene seems to fulfill the subtitle, but it's also the ending that Brandstetter would want for a class act. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Hansen concludes his long-running Dave Brandstetter series with a well-worked, compact scenario that begins with an abused child's eyewitness account of murder and kidnap. Despite his retirement and a noticeable sense of fatigue, Dave immerses himself in events surrounding the crucial item in the little boy's story: the shooting death of one Cricket Shales, a failed and recently paroled guitarist. While aiding the police with a lengthy list of suspects, Dave still listens to several old friends worried about publication of some high school memoirs. Skilled characterization, humane concerns, and a surprise or two commend this title to Brandstetter fans, but the book stands equally well on its own.

Library Journal