Preview of SKINFLICK and GRAVEDIGGER, Dave Brandstetter #5 and #6

SKINFLICK lands on shelves in March and GRAVEDIGGER in April but here’s a sneak peak of Jeff Wong’s incredible covers along with book synopsis.

THIS TITLE IS FOR PREORDER AND WILL SHIP WHEN IVENTORY IS RECEIVED LATER THIS YEAR

Buy in Paperback Here or from Preferred Retailers:
SYNDICATE | INDIEBOUND | BARNES & NOBLE | AMAZON

Death claims investigator Dave Brandstetter navigates the opposing realms of evangelical Christianity and the porn business while tracking a lost girl in late 1970s Los Angeles.

Lon Tooker certainly fits the profile: big, strong, a Marine Corps veteran, and recently the target of evangelical crusader Gerald Dawson’s wrath. Tooker’s adult toys and pornography store on the local skid row has recently become the target of Dawson’s church men’s group and their destructive masked raids on “un-Christian” businesses. When Dawson is strangled to death by someone of Tooker’s size and ability, the police see a smut-peddler with a motive. Case closed.

But death claims investigator Dave Brandstetter doesn’t like it. By all accounts Tooker is a softy incapable of such a crime. Actual evidence is nonexistent and assumptions many. And Dave particularly doesn’t care for assumptions based on someone’s sex life.

But Dave is also navigating new personal territory. His father’s death has left him bereaved and for the first time in a long time without a job. Dave quit the insurance company his father built and has struck out on his own as a private investigator. Add in his breakup with his recent partner and he’s a man unencumbered. It’s the late 1970s and Dave may be aging a bit but he’s still handsome, wealthy, and recently in possession of a new convertible Triumph. Looks like it’s not all hard work.

THIS TITLE IS FOR PREORDER AND WILL SHIP WHEN IVENTORY IS RECEIVED LATER THIS YEAR

Buy in Paperback Here or from Preferred Retailers:
SYNDICATE | INDIEBOUND | BARNES & NOBLE | AMAZON

A cult leader named Azrael perpetrates a brutal mass murder and afterwards a slimy lawyer is trying to claim the life insurance policy for his missing daughter; it's the early '80s in Los Angeles and private investigator Dave Brandstetter has a new love in his life as exciting as this case is dreadful.

Two years ago Charles Westover disgraced himself and his family when he was disbarred for bribery. Westover’s daughter Serenity, disgusted with her once beloved father, ran away to a cult founded by a mesmerizingly handsome young man, a self-appointed messiah going by the grimly grandiose name of Azrael. The whereabouts of Serenity pass unknown for years until the police raid Azrael’s compound and discover that the cult leader lived up to his ghastly “Angel of Death” moniker.

Thinking his daughter has been murdered, Charles Westover claims her life insurance, and then he too vanishes. Insurance companies don’t like to cut a check without a body and especially don’t like cutting a check to someone who is also missing. Hired as a private investigator for Banner Insurance, David Brandstetter quickly finds himself in a complicated maze of lies and hidden histories. And Dave suspects that, just like in the labyrinths of old, there will be a monster at the end of it.

It's not all bad times and extreme hazard for our man Dave. A passionate romance has entered his life with the reappearance of Cecil Harris, a handsome young African American investigative reporter for the local news station looking to get to the bottom of a different kind of story.

THE MAN EVERYBODY WAS AFRAID OF, Dave Brandstetter #4 On Sale Now

ON SALE NOW

Buy in Paperback Direct from Syndicate or from Preferred Retailers:
INDIEBOUND | BARNES & NOBLE | AMAZON

The murder of a conservative police chief in a fishing village north of Los Angeles sends death claims investigator Dave Brandstetter into the no-man's land between cops and activists in this brilliantly plotted mystery, which perfectly captures California in the mid-1970s.

A small-town Chief of Police with reactionary politics and national ambitions, Ben Orton struck fear in the hearts of anyone who fell out of line in his little fiefdom of La Caleta. Most recently that has included gay rights activists pushing for the hiring of a police officer from their community. When big Ben is found in his backyard bludgeoned to death by a large terracotta pot, the police arrest the outspoken gay owner of a local nursery.

Orton had a life insurance policy that brings death claims investigator Dave Brandstetter north to pry. As far as Dave can tell, the cops did almost nothing to investigate Orton’s death and what evidence they did compile doesn’t seem to add up. Dave quickly learns that the pool of suspects is much deeper than the police reported. Ben Orton may have seen himself as a pillar of the community but what many in La Caleta saw instead was a violent man whose commitment to enforcement didn’t always also include room for the law.

With an ailing father in the hospital and a relationship headed toward the rocks, a very distracted Brandstetter finds himself making more wrong moves than right while those on the other side of the thin blue line are making it painfully obvious his presence is not wanted.

Announcing the Return of Joseph Hansen's Dave Brandstetter Novels, Canonical Works of LGBTQ Fiction Celebrating 50 Years

“Joseph Hansen is not only one of America’s best mystery writers, he is a great American writer. Period. Full stop. In a better world, one liberated from its idiotic prejudices, he would be recognized as such. The republication of the Brandstetter novels by Syndicate Books is a hopeful sign that this marvelous writer will, at last, find the place he deserves in the pantheon of American literature.”

— Michael Nava, from his Foreword to the Syndicate edition of FADEOUT

COMING IN 2022: The twelve Dave Brandstetter Mysteries.

Dear Reader,

Syndicate Books is enormously proud to announce our third author restoration project. Starting in January of 2022, we will be ushering back to print and digital availability all twelve novels in the landmark and truly excellent Dave Brandstetter series by Joseph Hansen.

We think that you’ll find that the literary quality of the project, and worthiness of the author’s social contributions, very much measure up to the previous authors Syndicate Books has restored to print. Those are big words considering the previous two authors were Ted Lewis, largely considered the wellspring from which all British hardboiled fiction flows, and Margaret Millar, the MWA Grandmaster whose keen-edged mysteries both subverted and defined a golden age of socially daring mysteries.

So, who then is Joseph Hansen’s Dave Brandstetter? Tall, handsome, smart and successful is a good place to start. A native Californian, Dave is a World War II vet and the kind of serious, ruggedly independent, and above all decent man people like to celebrate when they talk about the “Greatest Generation.” He is a death claims investigator for Medallion Life Insurance and he’s damned good at his job.

There’s something of Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer or, perhaps more appropriately, Dashiell Hammett’s Nick Charles, to Dave’s investigation style. These are books that are fun to read, with fully rendered characters and meticulous plots that sit comfortably between “whodunnit” and hard boiled. Hansen was also a poet, as capable of conjuring the pastoral beauty of a lush arroyo as he is at delivering a blistering movie-ready one-liner. These books hum with language and dialogue.

Hansen may have been a master of the genre, as evidenced by his Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, but he was equally interested in rendering his protagonist’s personal life with detail and humanity. In fact, it’s this trait that makes them such rare and special books. That is because Dave Brandstetter, like his creator, is gay and out to anyone who cares to ask.

The covers for the first three Dave Brandstetter novels being released by Syndicate Books in January of 2022. Another book will follow every month through October 2022. CLICK HERE for more information.

Fadeout, the first Dave Brandstetter novel, was published in 1970, when, as the award-winning novelist Michael Nava notes in his Introduction to our forthcoming edition, homosexuality was illegal in 49 out of 50 states. This is why the word “landmark” is so apropos. Much like Chester Himes, Joseph Hansen challenged and, well, demolished the conventional wisdom about who “mainstream” crime fiction could be written about. And he did so with panache. These books, with all the impressive world-building and character development within, are sheer delights to read. I can practically guarantee that Dave will soon be a favorite.

The twelve novels that comprise the Dave Brandstetter Mysteries take place from 1965 to the late 1980s. As each installment was written contemporaneously to the plots, the series as a whole has taken on an impressive air of social history. The slow economic decline of the United States, AIDS, and the rise of reactionary religion and politics are all grappled with in real time. There is of course also the steady antagonizing presence of homophobia, which changes too little with the times and never sits a book out.

But Dave Brandstetter doesn’t sit out any either. Dave may drink hard (but tastefully; lots of Glenlivet and Old Crow back when Old Crow was as good as bourbon gets) and have his share of romantic distractions, but he attacks a case with the fervor of an avenging angel when homophobia and lazy police work go hand in hand. Dave’s a tough opponent too. He may solve the case with his wits but when it comes time to apprehend or defend someone, he is ready and able to throw down.

I am extremely excited to be able to introduce anew this amazing character and series to readers. Joseph Hansen deserves to be considered among the greatest writers that crime fiction has produced, or as Michael Nava notes, that this country has produced. He is excellent. Enjoy.

Sincerely,

Paul Oliver
Publisher
Syndicate Books