CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF DAVE BRANDSTETTER

Death claims investigator Dave Brandstetter navigates the opposing realms of evangelical Christianity and the porn business while tracking a lost girl in late 1970s Los Angeles.

Lon Tooker certainly fits the profile: big, strong, a Marine Corps veteran, and recently the target of evangelical crusader Gerald Dawson’s wrath. Tooker’s adult toys and pornography store on the local skid row has recently become the target of Dawson’s church men’s group and their destructive masked raids on “un-Christian” businesses. When Dawson is strangled to death by someone of Tooker’s size and ability, the police see a smut-peddler with a motive. Case closed.

But death claims investigator Dave Brandstetter doesn’t like it. By all accounts Tooker is a softy incapable of such a crime. Actual evidence is nonexistent and assumptions many. And Dave particularly doesn’t care for assumptions based on someone’s sex life.

But Dave is also navigating new personal territory. His father’s death has left him bereaved and for the first time in a long time without a job. Dave quit the insurance company his father built and has struck out on his own as a private investigator. Add in his breakup with his recent partner and he’s a man unencumbered. It’s the late 1970s and Dave may be aging a bit but he’s still handsome, wealthy, and recently in possession of a new convertible Triumph. Looks like it’s not all hard work.

Now working freelance, Dave Brandstetter digs into an evangelist's secret life. His father's death left Brandstetter with a hole in his heart and an inheritance in his bank account. The money allowed him to venture out on his own, launching a freelance insurance investigation agency that specializes in suspicious deaths. His first case is potentially explosive, and if he isn't careful, it could be his last. Crusading evangelist Gerald Dawson believes that piety and violence go hand-in-hand. To clean up his local skid row, he has taken to vigilante justice, ransacking pornography shops and intimidating their owners. When Gerald is found with his neck snapped, the police finger smut peddler Lon Tooker for the crime, but Dave disagrees. As he digs into the holy man's nighttime activities, he finds a collection of sins that would make even the devil blush.

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