Backtrack

<p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>California teenager Alan Tarr extraordinarily bright has faced challenges in his short life: his father Eric to whom he bears a striking resemblance (small and fair haired and on the pretty side of handsome) chose a career as a movie actor rarely rising beyond bit parts. He lived a somewhat sordid life which ended suddenly when he fell off a balcony. Though his father was charismatic he made a lot of enemies. One of his friends states: Eric was a disease you don't recover from.</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Alan was raised by his mother Babe a scraping-by-at-best piano bar entertainer; Eric had abandoned the family when Alan was just six months old; the boy only knew his father from late movie reruns. Trying to connect Alan heads to LA for the funeral hitchhiking his only means and falls in with a pack of hippie musicians; he's befriended by a young woman and her jealous boyfriend. Late for the funeral he encounters the first of several in the LA agent/actor circle who knew his father intimately. And so begins a journey to learn about himself his father and uncover if the death was accident suicide ... or murder.</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Much of the story is told in flashback: Alan begins his narration with two broken legs in heavy casts lying in a bed in a ramshackle beach house. He's a sitting duck if there is a murderer out there waiting to finish him off.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Hansen produced nearly 40 books including mainstream novels including </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Backtrack A Smile in His Lifetime</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> and </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Job's Year</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> from the early 1980s reissued in 2025 by ReQueered Tales. His best known work the Dave Brandstetter series of mystery novels pioneered the genre for the LGBT community.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Joseph Hansen has written a brilliant piece. His characters are splendidly fleshed out. - </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>The New York Times Book Review</em></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>In the tradition of Chandler and Hammett Joseph Hansen writes with gritty fluency of the sordid side of West Coast life. - </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Washington Post Books</em></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Hansen's prose is lean: the dialogue relentlessly moves the story along and the novel teems with colorful characters. </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>- </em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Stephen W. Breedlove</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)></span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Backtrack</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)> is beautifully written with fully-realized (memorable) characters exquisitely evoked mood and biting humor. </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>- </em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Drew Brainard</span></p><p></p>