HANSEN IS, AS HANSEN DOES., January 26, 1998

Briefly, this is the story of Steve who is young, bright and black. Steve's family has all but disowned him, in part due to his marriage (now cracking apart), and partly due to a play Steve wrote. With Steve's future as a playwright indefinitely on hold, Steve has only his love -- Coy Randol -- to keep him warm (which is the equivilent of saying the only good thing is one's life is one's addiction to heroin). Then Coy gets his cute little self murdered, and Steve is the main suspect.

This might sound a little dreary, but it's not. For one thing the plot is a classic, and the characters are believable and fresh, not those painfully familiar stereotypes that people most mystery novels (Hansen is like the zen master of characterization: a sentence or two and you swear you know this person). For another thing, PRETTY BOY DEAD is hypnotic, baked in that old Angeleno atmosphere, that Chandleresque ambiance. Every detail--well, I just wish everybody in this genre wrote this marvellously.

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