The Boy Who Was Buried This Morning

For mystery readers mysteriously unacquainted with Hansen's Dave Brandstetter, this will be a good introduction. Brandstetter, officially retired as a private eye, accedes to his lover Cecil's request to investigate the death of Vaughn Thomas, a co-worker at Channel 3 shot in a ``combat pursuit'' game by a real gun, not a paintball. Traveling to the home town of the young woman Thomas lived with, Brandstetter arrives just after she's murdered and her young son wounded. On a course marked by a right-wing paramilitary group, a jealous ex-husband and Thomas's hard-driving marketing-consultant stepmother (none of them nice), Hansen guides us in spare, smooth prose to a satisfying conclusion. Brandstetter's homosexuality is treated lightly--a boy in the paramilitary group has ``pretty arms''--and his age isn't avoided: he needs his reading glasses. A worthy addition to classic Southern California detective stories. (May)