With these crazy hot temperatures, crime increases. So, stay home, grab a frosé and lounge chair by the pool or a coffee drink and couch in the AC, and “increase” your crime the safe way with a delicious queer mystery or thriller. In this round-up, Queer Crime Writers* is scooping up several novels published earlier this summer, from A.I.-inspired storylines to cold cases to queer crime families to murders inspired by the Salem Witch trials. On the horizon, expect a new twisted gothic from John Fram and another Charleston, West Virginia-based crime procedural from Eliot Parker. Finally, don’t miss two complex and well-researched true crime books by authors Greg Lily and James Polchin.
When the heat is on, crank up the air and kick back with a great crime novel.
*Queer Crime Writers is an organization that advocates for LGBTQIA+ crime fiction authors and creates community for them.
Deepfaked to Death, by Meg Perry
The third book in Perry’s Angeles Investigations series features Kevin Brodie and Kristen Beach, brother and sister-in-law to Jamie Brodie, the main character of her popular twenty-three-book series. A former Los Angeles police officer turned private detective, Kevin investigates a case that takes the team into the world of A.I. and deepfakes, where it’s hard to tell what is or isn’t real. Jon Eckoff, a detective with the Los Angeles police force, is caught on camera shooting an unarmed man in an empty warehouse and is accused of the crime. But can what’s on video be believed? Jon claims it’s a fake, and he needs the Angeles Investigative team to help prove his innocence and find who is attempting to frame him and why.
The Happy Month, Marshall Thornton
Dom Reilly is a man with secrets. Secrets that could get him killed. But things are looking up in this third book of the Reilly series. The co-op he started with his boyfriend Ronnie has taken shape, his social life is thriving, and he enjoys his work at the Freedom Agenda, a nonprofit striving to exonerate the wrongly convicted. Dom is working on getting a client, Larry Wilkes, out of jail for the 1976 murder of his boyfriend and has taken on a fifty-year-old cold case, the 1949 murder of Vera Korenko. Fans of Marshall Thornton’s series will appreciate running into familiar characters as Dom Reilly juggles cases. But if his old friends can track him down, so can his old enemies.
The Devil You Know, by Ali Vali
In the ninth book in the award-winning series, The Devil You Know, Cain Casey has been groomed to take over the family’s organized crime business in New Orleans. Once a playgirl, she has settled into a stable life with her wife, Emma, and their three children. As her crime business grows, rogue federal agents present a new threat, and the Russian mob seeks revenge for losses they blame on Cain’s family. To protect themselves, Cain and Emma team up with the local feds, but the partnership is fraught. Cain wants to vanquish her enemies permanently, stopping at nothing to keep her business and family safe.
Undercurrent, by Patricia Evans
When bodies start washing up on the shore in Salem Harbor, Massachusetts, an elite task force of FBI agents, profilers, and detectives join forces to decode the clues and stop a killer inspired by the Salem Witch trials of 1692. Agent Tala Marshall overcame a childhood of deep generational wounds to become the country’s best criminal profiler. Now, facing her most challenging case yet, she partners with Wilder Mason, a local detective convinced the murders are connected to the famous witch trials. Hoping for more than a professional relationship, Wilder pursues the key to the case and Tala’s guarded heart. Will they uncover the connection between Salem’s past and present before another victim washes to shore?
No Road Home, by John Fram
In The Bright Lands, his queer horror thriller debut, Fram writes about a small Texas town absorbed with football, corrupt town officials, and a monster that demands blood sacrifices. In No Road Home, his second novel, he takes us back to Texas for an even more claustrophobic and gothic atmosphere. Toby Tucker, his new wife Alyssa, and his young queer son visit the family compound of his wife’s father, a famed fire and brimstone televangelist. Toby quickly learns that his wife, Alyssa, and her family have nefarious plans for Toby and his son. When a violent storm kills the power, his son reports seeing a spectral figure creeping around in the dark. When Alyssa’s father is found stabbed through the chest, Toby and his son must find a way to survive the night.
Double-Crossed, by Eliot Parker
In this continuation of Parker’s Ronan McCullough series, Charleston Police Sergeant McCullough, still recovering from his last case, investigates the charred remains of a federal agent and its connection to a professor’s encrypted money laundering scheme. As people associated with the scheme die, his boyfriend, Ty, helps secure a lead. When he discovers the staggering scope of the crimes, he knows he has stumbled into a conspiracy and can trust no one. Friends, colleagues, and mentors are all under suspicion as he hunts a killer and avoids becoming a victim himself. But how can he find a murderer when his only true suspect is a set of numbers?
True Crime by Queer Authors
Abingdon’s Boardinghouse Murder, by Greg Lilly
This true-life account of a brutal 1945 murder in Abingdon, Virginia, combines fact and fictional narrative to explore the intricacies of the case and the mindset of the players who populate it. On a bitter November night in 1945, Helen Clark, a widow, shot her young boarder, a WWII veteran, and left him to die on the floor of his room. Clark then tossed the gun under the neighbor’s porch and took a taxi to join her teen daughters at a movie in nearby Bristol. When the body is found, the authorities claim it was a murder committed in a jealous rage, and the trial enthralls the nation. Blending newspaper reports, investigation documents, and other trial coverage, Lilly reveals the public and personal repercussions of this sensational murder.
Shadow Men: the Tangled Story of Murder, Media, and Privilege that Scandalized Jazz Age America, by James Polchin
(out now)
Edgar Award finalist James Polchin’s much anticipated new true crime book opens in 1922 with the discovery of 19-year-old Clarence Peters’ body on the side of a road in New Rochelle, New York. The handsome, dishonorably discharged sailor was shot and discarded. Walter Ward, a scion of the “bread barons” who owned the largest chain of bread factories in the country, confessed to the murder, claiming self-defense against a gang of blackmailers who preyed on their victims’ moral weaknesses called “shadow men” to whom Peters supposedly belonged. Amidst the media firestorm, many speculated that Ward was lying about the true, more controversial motive for the murder: homosexual blackmail. A complex murder investigation with many twists and turns, this book highlights the social inequity, glamour, and violence of The Great Gatsby era.
