The following obituary for Joseph Hansen was in this
morning's Washington Post.
Richard Moore
Joseph Hansen; Created Gay Detective
By Adam Bernstein Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday,
December 7, 2004; Page B06
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 homosexual.
Mr. Hansen had spent years writing poetry and gay-themed
fiction under a pseudonym when he decided to enter the
mainstream detective market with "Fadeout" (1970), which
introduced his savvy insurance investigator/protagonist Dave
Brandstetter.
Unfailingly tenacious in the fictional tradition of Philip
Marlowe, Sam Spade and Mike Hammer, Brandstetter was a man of
decency on the deceptively sunny streets of Southern
California. And when the day was over, he preferred the
company of men.
The Brandstetter books first appeared at a peak early moment
in the gay liberation movement, a year after the Stonewall
Inn riots in New York's Greenwich Village. Along with
Tennessee Williams and Christopher Isherwood, Mr. Hansen
became one of the few popular and identifiable gay literary
voices publishing in the United States at the time.
He was almost alone in the realm of mystery stories.
"Homosexuals have commonly been treated shabbily in detective
fiction -- vilified, pitied, at best patronized," Mr. Hansen
told "St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers." "This
was neither fair nor honest.
"When I sat down to write 'Fadeout' in 1967, I wanted to
write a good, compelling whodunit, but I also wanted to right
some wrongs," he said. "Almost all the folksay about
homosexuals is false. So I had some fun turning cliché³ and
stereotypes on their heads in that book. It was easy."
It was publishing the story that was hard. It took nearly
three years to find a publishing house that would accept an
unapologetically gay sleuth without turning the story into a
sensationalized account of his homosexuality. Pointedly, the
series finishes with Brandstetter having the same lover for
22 years while his father has swept through nine
marriages.
When "Fadeout" appeared, its author was praised by reviewers
for making Brandstetter foremost an intriguing character. He
did not turn his stories into political manifestos about gay
rights -- "The Subject," as he called it. Instead, he focused
on a well-paced mystery involving a man who happens to have
an eye for men.
Brandstetter was Mr. Hansen's sleuth in a dozen novels, the
last of which was "A Country of Old Men" (1991), which shows
his weary hero in his late sixties in a post-AIDS
world.
In that book, Brandstetter stirs the ire of his longtime
lover with his reluctance to retire and give up cigarettes.
The boyfriend is also mad that the detective doesn't
appreciate the avocado omelet he has whipped up.
On the positive side, Brandstetter turns down a comely young
man's advances with the reply, "I'm flattered . . . but my
sleeping partner wouldn't like it."
Mr. Hansen, the son of a shoe shop operator, was born July
19, 1923, in Aberdeen, S.D. As his family struggled during
the Depression, he was raised in Minneapolis and Altadena,
Calif.
His early poetry was accepted by the New Yorker and other
august magazines. He co-founded the gay publication Tangents
in 1965, produced the radio program "Homosexuality Today" in
Los Angeles in 1969 and helped plan the first gay pride
parade in Hollywood in 1970.
For years, Mr. Hansen wrote books under the name James
Colton, including, "Lost on Twilight Road" (1964); "Strange
Marriage" (1965); and "Known Homosexual" (1968), later
revised and republished as "Pretty Boy Dead," the title Mr.
Hansen originally wanted.
Long an admirer of detective fiction, he wrote "Fadeout" as
an antidote to what he considered the crude literary style of
Mickey Spillane but still featured a man as open about his
desires as Spillane's Mike Hammer.
Eventually Joan Kahn, the celebrated mystery editor at Harper
& Row, accepted "Fadeout," which garnered much publicity
and made Mr. Hansen a mini-celebrity.
In the book, Brandstetter investigates an insular community
whose popular radio host is presumed dead -- but who
conveniently has taken out a $100,000 life insurance
policy.
His other Brandstetter books included "Early Graves" (1987),
about a killer of gay men with AIDS. In Time magazine,
William A. Henry III wrote that "Early Graves," which
emphasized the hysteria that the autoimmune disease caused,
will "rank with the best" of novels addressing AIDS.
In 1992, Mr. Hansen received a life achievement award from
the Private Eye Writers of America.
He also wrote books of poetry, other detective series,
several non- detective novels and a biography of Don Slater,
who founded the gay and lesbian magazine One in 1953.
Mr. Hansen was married to the former Jane Bancroft, a teacher
and translator, for 51 years until her death in 1994. He told
Out magazine in 2003 that his wife was a lesbian and that
they had an "agreement" to see other people, provided they
first asked each other, "Was this person OK?"
"Here was this remarkable person who I wanted to spend the
rest of my life with," he said of his wife. "So something was
right about it, however bizarre it may seem to the rest of
the world."
The couple had a daughter who later underwent a sex-change
operation and is now known as Daniel James Hansen. He
survives.
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