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• Death claims
  Following ‘Fadeout’ (1970), this is the second book in Joseph Hansen’s Brandstetter series, featuring gay private investigator David ‘Dave’ Brandstetter. Set in Los Angeles, it moves through the worlds of rare books, community theatre and television. Hansen eventually published twelve books in the series and can be credited with inventing the ‘gay detective’ genre. Gay themes are woven throughout – in book nine, Brandstetter must track down a serial killer who is targeting gay men with AIDS. Hansen, born in 1923, was also a poet and journalist. Under the pen name James Colton, he published several gay novels in the pre-Stonewall era, including ‘Strange Marriage’ (1965) and ‘Known Homosexual’ (1968). He received a Private Eye Writers of America Lifetime Achievement Award in 1992, writing several more books before his death in 2004.
• Death trick
  Written by journalist and author Richard Lipez (1938-2022), using the name Stevenson, this is the first novel in a series of sixteen to feature the private investigator, Donald Strachey. The story follows Strachey as he investigates a murder in Albany, New York, where the victim and prime suspect are both gay men. Strachey is also gay so can explore the otherwise closed ranks of the gay community. The back cover blurb includes a quote from author Armistead Maupin which makes the perhaps unavoidable comment, “At last a private dick who really earns the title”. Some other books in the Donald Strachey series were filmed for television. Stevenson’s series is often considered alongside books by Joseph Hansen featuring gay detective Dave Brandstetter, who first appeared in print in 1970. One of these books, ‘Death Claims’, was also seized during ‘Operation Tiger’.