Joseph Hansen is the father of the gay mystery novel. While the typical hero of the hard-boiled mystery novel before Hansen was tough, macho, and unquestionably heterosexual, Hansen expanded the genre by introducing Dave Brandstetter, tough, macho, and unabashedly homosexual. The mainstream reading public gradually embraced this unconventional detective and, even though Hansen had not planned to write about Brandstetter beyond the first novel, his daring creation unexpectedly became, as he put it in a 1991 interview with Peter Burton, his "bread and butter" as well as his claim to fame and was featured eventually in twelve novels and two short stories. Hansen's expressed goal was to turn gay stereotypes and clichés on their heads: "I wanted to correct as many misapprehensions ordinary mortals have about homosexuals and the way they live as I could in the space of fifty thousand words."

While admiring Dashiell Hammett, Raymond...