Gravedigger, by Joseph Hansen (Holt, Rinehart, 183 pp., $12.50).
After Lew Archer, what? The question, sad to say, is no longer academic, six years having passed since Ross Macdonald’s last book, and aficionados of the hard-boiled crime novel with a touch of literary class are beginning to wonder when someone will come along to keep the line going. The smart money now is on Joseph Hansen, a Los Angeles writer who, in his 1970 mystery Fadeout, introduced a decidedly offbeat character: Dave Brandstetter, an insurance investigator specializing in “death claims.” Though Brandstetter fits easily into the Spade-Marlowe-Archer mold— aging detective, sunny California, virtue at bay in a society full of rampant corruption—Hansen has a few fresh angles of his own that keep the Brandstetter novels from becoming just another exercise in déjà vu, like avoiding showy similes and opting for a cooler third-person narrative mode. As for Dave Brandstetter, there’s also something different about him: he’s gay. Not the limp-wristed type, mind you, despite his love of gourmet cooking and Alban Berg or his predilection for setting up housekeeping with some real nellies; he’s basically just a middle-aged, hardworking guy who’s too old to change and not particularly inclined to do so anyway. If the very idea of a hard-boiled homosexual offends you, don’t bother. If not, then Hansen has a new Dave Brandstetter novel out, an excellent missing-person caper called Gravedigger in -which Dave barely escapes getting shot to pieces while searching for a bankrupt lawyer and his cult-crazy daughter. Though Hansen’s work lacks the thoughtfulness and scope of the later Macdonald, there’s no one more promising on the detective-story scene today, and Gravedigger is Hansen’s best book yet. It’s exciting to think what he’ll be doing with the form in another five years—which is no reason to wait that long before checking him out. Good news, by the way: Holt’s Owl Books paperback division has just brought out soft-cover editions of Hansen’s five previous Brandstetter yarns, Fadeout, Death Claims, Troublemaker, The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of, and Skinflick. Much obliged, fellows.
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