Jack of Hearts

Nathan Reed #.5

by Joseph Hansen

Befriending a colorful group of individuals who run the college newspaper, seventeen-year-old Nathan Reed pursues his dream of becoming a writer, until he discovers the emotional penalties of growing up and expressing his homosexuality. Reprint.

Genres: Gay, Fiction, LGBT, Gay Fiction, Historical Fiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Joseph Hansen (1923–2004) was an American author of mysteries. The son of a South Dakota shoemaker, he moved to a California citrus farm with his family in 1936. He began publishing poetry in the New Yorker in the 1950s, and joined the editorial teams of gay magazines ONE and Tangents in the 1960s. Using the pseudonyms Rose Brock and James Colton, Hansen published five novels and a collection of short stories before the appearance of Fadeout (1970), the first novel published under his own name.

The book introduced street-smart insurance investigator Dave Brandstetter, a complex, openly gay hero who grew and changed over the series’s twelve novels. By the time Hansen concluded the series with A Country of Old Men (1990), Brandstetter was older, melancholy, and ready for retirement. The 1992 recipient of the Private Eye Writers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award, Hansen published several more novels before his death in 2004.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name.

Reviews

[Altivo Overo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first novel I've read outside of the Brandstetter mysteries that Hansen published under his own name. I am familiar with his writing as James Colton, though, and expect that this one might as easily have been released under that pseudonym. It may even have been written earlier than the first Brandstetter book, Fadeout, which appeared in 1970.

I feel confident that there are autobiographical elements here, somewhat thinly disguised. Hansen would have been the same age as protagonist Nathan Reed in the period of this story, which is around 1940. Like Reed, he was a transplant from the east into California, though his father was said to have been a shoemaker rather than an itinerant musician.

The setting, the social attitudes and suspicions, everything rings true for the end of the Depression and the rumblings of war to come in the US. Nathan Reed's uncertainty about his own sexuality and his naive view of what others were doing and saying around him is familiar enough.

Had I read this without being told who the author was, I'd very probably have picked Hansen, or rather his James Colton pseudonym. This is not at the brilliant level of the Brandstetter series, but still a very worthwhile coming of age story that reminds us how very far US society and culture has come in the last 60 years or so. Anyone who has enjoyed Hansen's more famous novels will probably like this, and certainly anyone who liked James Colton's books will also enjoy it.

[Gary Garth McCann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before I read Hansen's Dave Brandstetter detective series, I read his later novels Living Upstairs and Jack of Hearts, which I treasure for the author's memories of a 1940s L.A. and for depicting a gay presence then and there. In Jack of Hearts, set before Living Upstairs, protagonist Nathan is 17, living with his folks. Remember, it's a different era than we know now: "...that naked afternoon in Foley's wide white bed...[Nathan had] gone over and over it...know[ing] bitterly he shouldn't...[but] wanting Foley to take him to that bed again." Excellent read for getting a feel for being young and homosexual when homosexuality was viewed as reprehensible.

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nathan gravitates to the Moon Cafe where he meets the staff of the Fair Oaks Junior College Monitor. Since working for a newspaper is Nathan’s absolute dream job, he finds a way to infiltrate the paper, regardless of not ticking any of the admission boxes. He’s in.

The cast of characters couldn’t be more eclectic, an ingenue, an instructor, a waitress, mortuary organist, and lots more. There’s so much subterfuge going on it’s hard to know where to start.