Bohannon's Women: Mystery Stories

Bohannon #3

by Joseph Hansen

In this collection of Joseph Hansen's longer stories, he demonstrates how versatile he has become, not only as a storyteller but as an observer of contemporary Southern California.

Hardcover

First published June 1, 2002

About the author

Joseph Hansen (1923–2004) was an American author of mysteries. The son of a South Dakota shoemaker, he moved to a California citrus farm with his family in 1936. He began publishing poetry in the New Yorker in the 1950s, and joined the editorial teams of gay magazines ONE and Tangents in the 1960s. Using the pseudonyms Rose Brock and James Colton, Hansen published five novels and a collection of short stories before the appearance of Fadeout (1970), the first novel published under his own name.

The book introduced street-smart insurance investigator Dave Brandstetter, a complex, openly gay hero who grew and changed over the series’s twelve novels. By the time Hansen concluded the series with A Country of Old Men (1990), Brandstetter was older, melancholy, and ready for retirement. The 1992 recipient of the Private Eye Writers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award, Hansen published several more novels before his death in 2004.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name.

Reviews

[Trux · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book caught my eye at the library because of the name "Bohannon" jumping out at me simply for being almost the same name as someone annoying on the internet. I pulled it out, read the jacket, and it sounded like fun so I checked it out.

Not a genre I'm really familiar with so I don't know what the standards are; to me the stories were mildly entertaining but not at all believable. I was also expecting something more politically progressive/less stereotype-riddled based on the author bio on the flap: "Hansen's Dave Brandstetter private-eye novels were the first serious books about a homosexual crime protagonist."

A relatively pleasant way to pass the time. Cozy and well-suited for before-bed reading but not in an all-absorbing way.