This is the twenty-first  in a series highlighting
the best gay and lesbian authors from the 20th century (with a few before and
after that period) who have recorded in fiction, and nonfiction, the history of
gay people telling what life is, and was, during an important time of
history.

I
really enjoyed reading Hansen's Brandsetter's series which were sort of
a gay Mickey Spillane's Hammer series. They were about a hard boiled
detective involved in all sort of off the beat cases but instead of the
sexy female there was a sexy male involved.

Joseph Hansen (July 19, 1923 - November 24,
2004) was an American crime writer and poet, best known for a series of
novels starring his most iconic creation, private eye Dave Brandstetter.

Life and works
Hansen was born in 1923 in Aberdeen, South Dakota, and grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Altadena, California.[1]
Although
he published almost forty books in a wide variety of genres, Hansen is
best remembered for his ground breaking series of crime novels starring
his most iconic creation, Dave Brandstetter, an openly homosexual private eye who still embodied the tough, no-nonsense personality of the classic hardboiled protagonist. His first adventure, Fadeout, was published in 1970, and
over the next twenty-one years eleven more entries in the series were
written: Death Claims (1973), Troublemaker (1975), The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of (1978), Skinflick (1979), Gravedigger (1982), Nightwork (1984), The Little Dog Laughed (1986), Early Graves (1987), Obedience
(1988), The Boy Who Was Buried This Morning (1990), and A Country of Old
Men (1991). No Exit Books, a British publisher, issued an omnibus
volume, The Complete Brandstetter, in 2007

Hansen
published his first work, a poem, in The New Yorker, in 1952. He also
published poetry in other magazines, briefly sang with a
folk-music-group on a California radio-station, and had several
part-time jobs in bookstores and magazines.
At the beginning of his career as a novelist, Hansen wrote under the pseudonym James Colton or James Coulton, producing novels such as Strange Marriage and Known Homosexual. He also wrote two gothic novels under the pseudonym Rose Brock.

Hansen
was also noted for writing poems, teaching workshops, and hosting a
1960s radio-show called Homosexuality Today. In 1970, he helped to found
the first Gay Pride Parade in Hollywood. Hansen disliked the term "gay"
and always described himself as "homosexual".

Hansen
won the 1992 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of
America, as well as a Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men's Mystery from
the Lambda Literary Foundation for A Country of Old Men: The Last Dave Brandstetter Mystery (1991).

Hansen
was married to artist Jane Bancroft, a lesbian, from 1943 to her death
in 1994. He said their relationship was that of "a gay man and a woman
who happened to love each other." The couple had one daughter, who later
had a sex-change operation. According to a friend quoted in an
obituary, Hansen also had two long-term male lovers.

Hansen died from heart failure in 2004 at his home in Laguna Beach, California.

Dave Brandstetter mysteries
Fadeout (1970)
Death Claims (1973)
Troublemaker (1975)
The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of (1978)
Skinflick (1979)
Gravedigger (1982)
Nightwork (1984)
The Little Dog Laughed (1986)
Early Graves (1987)
Obedience (1988)
The Boy Who Was Buried This Morning (1990)
A Country of Old Men (1991)
The Complete Brandstetter: Twelve Novels (No Exit Press, 2007)