This is the eighth novel by Joseph Hansen (Death Claims featuring independently wealthy, cultivated, fearlessand gayinsurance claims-death investigator Dave Brandstetter. His private life is low key ...

“My joke,” the mystery writer Joseph Hansen remarked in an interview, “was to take the true hard-boiled character in an American fiction tradition and make him homosexual.” It was more than a joke.

The acclaimed mystery writer Joseph Hansen, 81, who died of heart and lung ailments Nov. 24 at his home in Laguna Beach, Calif., added a novel twist to the genre when he made his sleuthing hero a ...