June 2025 MysteryKIT: LGBTQ+ mystery

This month, we're reading mystery novels from LGBTQ+ authors, or featuring detectives from that community.

It wasn't until the mid-1980s that such detectives began to appear with any frequency in mystery and crime fiction, though there were important precursors. Some of Patricia Highsmith's novels are, though not explicitly about gay characters, certainly coded that way. George Baxt's character Pharaoh Love, a Black gay man, made his first appearance in 1966; Joseph Hansen's insurance investigator Dave Brandstetter was perhaps the first gay detective to get serious attention from mainstream readers and critics, debuting in 1970.



But today, there's no shortage of popular authors writing stories about the LGBTQ+ community. Here's a sampler of some options, and most of these are the first in multi-book series:



The genre has grown enough that there are now two relatively large literary awards in the US honoring LGBTQ+ mystery novels. The most recent nominees for the Joseph Hansen Award...:



...and for the Lambda Literary Award's mystery category:



As always, you're invited to add your reading to the wiki: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2025_MysteryKIT#June:_LGBTQ.2B_detective...

I have a few on the tbr; will see what's easily available at the library:

- Razorblade Tears / S.A. Cosby
- Amuse Bouche / Anthony Bidulka
- City of Bones / Cassandra Clare

I've got a couple of books by Neil S. Plakcy on my TBR shelves and When the Saints Go Marching In, the first in a new-to-me series by Anthony Bidulka.

Carnival of Lies, the next in the Cesare Aldo series by D. V. Bishop is coming out at the end of the month so I'll have to see how flush with funds I am then.

Can I recommend Murder in the Closet by Curtis Evans, about portrayals of LGBT people in mystery fiction from the 1880s to the 1960s?

The website Stop, You're Killing Me is a terrific resource for mystery fans, and they have an index to LGBTQ+ detectives:

https://stopyourekillingme.com/DiversityCats/GayLesbian.html

I plan to read The Skeleton Road, the third book in the Karen Pirie series by Val McDermid.

I am also thinking of a Val McDermid mystery Report for Murder.

I plan on reading Oscar Wilde and A Death of No Importance by Gyles Brandreth

1222 by Anne Holt
I enjoyed this Norwegian mystery of the locked-room type. A train comes off the tracks 1222 meters above sea level in a raging blizzard. The passengers are helped to a hotel in the area to wait out the storm, where one is found dead. Although reluctant to help, Hanne Wilhelmsen, a former police officer is asked to investigate. In the course of her last case Hanne was paralyzed by a bullet, and is now retired and in a wheelchair. Prickly and outspoken, she gradually uses her natural curiosity to observe those around her. Holt’s story is not complex or twisty but it kept my interest throughout. Now I’m looking forward to reading more Hanne Wilhelmsen books.

I read How to Have a Killer Time in DC by Sam Lumley. This was a fun cozy mystery featuring a gay autistic travel reporter who gets involved in a murder investigation when working on a story in DC.

>9 staci426: That sounds like fun. Wishlisted

Hostage to Murder by Val McDermid
Not my favourite from McDermid. Too much of Lindsay’s personal life and relationships (plural) with just a bit of crime thrown in to make it fit the genre. Disappointing.

I finished Rough Cut by Stan Cutler, in which our detective team is a 50-ish ex-private eye and a 30-ish gay journalist.

I finished Report for Murder by Val McDermid, a novel that featured a newspaper reporter and an author working to get their friend out of prison and find the true killer of a musician.

The Distant Echo - also Val McDermid for me!

The July thread is now up: https://www.librarything.com/topic/371581

COMPLETED Blood Code by Neil S. Plakcy, the latest in a series about a gay police detective in Honolulu.

Starting When the Saints Go Marching In by Anthony Bidulka, a gay author.

I finished If Something Happens to Me by Alex Finlay, a thriller where the deputy sheriff and main investigator is gay.

COMPLETED When the Saints Go Marching In and The Women of Skawa Island, two thrillers by a Canadian gay writer, Anthony Bidulka.

108. Oscar Wilde and A Death of No Importance by Gyles Brandreth ★★★

A young artist’s model has been murdered, and legendary wit Oscar Wilde enlists his friends Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Sherard to help him investigate. But when they arrive at the scene of the crime, they find no sign of the gruesome killing—save one small spatter of blood, high on the wall. Set in London, Paris, Oxford, and Edinburgh at the height of Queen Victoria’s reign, here is a gripping eyewitness account of Wilde’s secret involvement in the curious case of Billy Wood, a young man whose brutal murder served as the inspiration for The Picture of Dorian Gray. Told by Wilde’s contemporary-poet Robert Sherard- this novel provides a fascinating and evocative portrait of the great playwright and his own “consulting detective,” Sherlock Holmes creator, Arthur Conan Doyle. (description from the back of book)

A mystery set in the Victorian age, it was interesting to read the Victorian colloquialisms that hinted at homosexuality while adhering to the strict standards of the time regarding that "perversion". A decent read, I will probably read another in the series if I come across it, but I will not seek them out.

I finished two sapphic sci fi/mystery novellas. I enjoyed both of them quite a bit.
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite, book 1 in the Dorothy Gentleman series. Dorothy is a detective on a ship and wakes up in the wrong body one day and needs to figure out what happened.
The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older is book 2 in the Mossa & Pleti series. Mossa is a detective on Jupiter and asks her partner, Pleti, to help investigate missing students at the university where Pleti works.

My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Books One and Two

I guess that's the difference... a good monster sometimes gives somebody a fright because they're weird-looking and fangy... a fact that is beyond their control... But bad monsters are all about CONTROL... They want the whole world to be scared so that BAD MONSTERS can call the shots.

It's hard to describe the experience of reading this story, because it seems to cover a little bit of everything. Karen Reyes, a young lesbian growing up in the 60s, seeks to solve the mysterious death of her upstairs neighbour. Full review on my thread.