Joseph Hansen

Joseph Hansen (1923-2004) was an American crime writer and poet best known for his groundbreaking Dave Brandstetter series of twelve novels, starting with Fadeout (1970), featuring an openly gay insurance investigator in the hardboiled tradition. He pioneered gay representation in detective fiction, earning the 1992 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America and multiple Lambda Literary Awards, including for A Country of Old Men (1991) and Living Upstairs (1993). Starters,