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Don Strachey

kevinburtonsmith

Created by Richard Stevenson
Pseudonym of Richard Lipez
(1938-2022)

Albany, New York private peeper DON STRACHEY is openly gay, a younger (forty-something) more emotional, and slightly flakier persona than Joseph Hansen’s middle-aged, controlled Dave Brandstetter. Where Dave is calm and collected, Don is flippant, sassy, sloppy, paranoid, compulsive, impulsive and prone to plots and plans. And sometimes just plain screwy. In other words, not particularly well-adjusted, although he is loyal to his friends, and he’s not a complete write-off as a private eye.

And he gets better. In fact, it’s one of the charms of the series to see Strachey develop both emotionally and professionally through the books.

Aiding him in his cases is his live-in lover (and sometime-conscience) Timothy J. Callahan, a strait-laced, Jesuit-trained attorney working for the state government, and later as a legislative aide for a New York senator, who plays Nora to Strachey’s Nick–or is it the other way around?

Also lending a hand are various friends and acquaintances in Albany’s surprisingly large gay network.

Albany?

Who knew?

Don also receives some rather reluctant help from gruff, conservative, homophobic and not-quite-the-sharpest-knife-in-the-drawer Detective Lieutenant Ned Bowman of the Albany Police, “a man in love with the obvious,” according to Don. But then, he adds “homosexuals not wearing pleated skirts always confused Bowman.”

What there is no confusion about is the quality of this series. Stevenson is simply one hell of a writer.

As a friend of mine once opined, “I’m not even gay–not that there’s anything wrong with that–but I think these are some of the funniest, smartest PI novels around. The guy is just a terrific writer! Maybe even brilliant.”

In the 2000s, there were even several made-for-television films with aired on the Here! network (“Gay television. No apologies.”), starring hunky Chad Allan as Strachey. Although low-budget, and with Vancouver, British Columbia (!) standing in for Albany, the movies received generally good reviews, prompting The New York Times to tag A Shock to the System (2006)  “a sly, refreshingly grown-up gay entertainment” and Out Magazine to proclaim “Chad Allan “Hotter than Columbo. Way, way hotter.”

And you’ve got to just love when Here! refers to Morgan Fairchild, who co-stars in one of the film as the “television diva and icon.”

Who knew? 

Author Richard Stevenson also reviews crime fiction for The Washington Post under the byline of Richard Lipez.

 

UNDER OATH

NOVELS

TELEVISION

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.

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