I’ve been writing mysteries for about ten years. In my Victorian-set Lady Sherlock books, I always try for some measure of diversity, whether it is the titular Lady Sherlock’s neurodivergence, her Mrs. Watson’s pansexuality, or a ship’s doctor from the Subcontinent, having been educated at Medical College, Bengal, one of the oldest schools to teach western medicine in Asia.
But my efforts are often frustrated by the limits of the age in which my characters lived. I can’t have female lawyers because women couldn’t practice law in the UK until after the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919. Minorities were similarly scarce before large-scale immigration began in the middle of the twentieth century. Folks who were not heteronormative had to live very carefully—Oscar Wilde’s trial was right around the corner. And women who preferred each other had to cloak their relationship with terms as “romantic friendship.”
Needless to say, one of the best things about setting my new book The Librarians in contemporary Austin, TX is that, in this workplace mystery, I am assured of a diverse cast of characters. Of the three librarians and one library clerk who find their lives suddenly intertwined in the wake of two murders, two are women of color, and two are queer—though not necessarily the same two.
One of my favorite aspects about being a writer is that I get to inhabit my characters when I write them. One of my favorite aspects about reading is exact the same—that I get to be in someone else’s shoes as they navigate their lives, their stories and circumstances so different from my own yet their emotions all the same ones I’ve known.
And there is no better place than an amateur-detective mystery, with its familiar, comforting structure, in which to experience lives that might be different from my own.
Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mysteries by Mia Manansala
This series brims with humor, charm, and fantastic Filipino food. In book one, Arsenic and Adobo, Lila Macapagal moves back home to recover from a bad breakup, only to find herself having to save her Tita Rosie’s faltering restaurant. But when her ex—who is a nasty food critic, no less—drops dead right after a blow-up with Lila, she suddenly finds herself having to solve his murder in order to save her own neck.
The Mavis Miller mysteries by Elise Bryant
The Holmes-esque titles—It’s Elementary and The Game Is Afoot immediately caught my attention. As did the school PTA angle, which reminded me a little bit of when I first thought about writing a female Sherlock Holmes character: I wanted the setting to be the middle school next door and the murder to happen at a robotics club meeting.
Mavis Miller, one of the few Black parents at the California elementary school her seven-year-old daughter attends, is not a PTA mom at all. But she finds herself roped into chairing the school’s brand-new DEI committee, only to witness a fallout between the PTA president and the principal. And then the principal goes missing.
Of Charms, Ghosts, and Grievances by Aliette de Bodard
Moving from contemporary America to a turn-of-the-century Paris devastated by The Great Magicians’ War, husbands Thuan and Asmodeus, a shape-changing dragon prince and a Fallen angel, respectively, find their family holiday among Thuan’s people in the underwater kingdom of the Seine interrupted by the discovery of a corpse in a ruined shrine, with a hungry ghost the only witness to the crime. This causes considerable complications and political intrigue, not to mention pressure on Thuan and Asmodeus’s marriage.
The Tree Mystery Series by Ovidia Yu
Beginning with the Frangipani Tree Mystery—followed by The Betel Nut Tree Mystery, The Paper Bark Tree Mystery, and six others—this atmospheric series takes readers back to Singapore of the 1930s and 1940s. Mission-school-educated Su Lin experiences her first brush with murder when she becomes nanny to the Acting Governor’s daughter, after the previous nanny dies suddenly. The series features a slow-burn romance too, for those for whom—like me—it is a definite plus.
The Parveen Mistry novels by Sujata Massey
Moving to Bombay in the 1920s. Oxford-educated Zoroastrian lawyer Parveen Mistry joins her father’s law firm, becoming one of the first female lawyers in India. She investigates dubious-looking wills signed by widows restricted to the purdah, mediate between maharanis battling over the education of a young prince, and digs into the falling death of a young female Parsi student just as the Prince of Wales’s grand procession passes by her college. Is that not everything you would want your amateur sleuth to do? (Although maybe strictly speaking, a woman with a legal background might not be 100% an amateur.)
The Harlem Renaissance Mysteries by Nekesa Afia
Staying in the same era, but zipping to the other side of the earth, Louise Lloyd is young and sapphic in Harlem. There is trauma in her past, but she’s doing all right in the present—until a girl turns up dead in front of the café where she works and Louise has to confront the fact that young black girls like her are being murdered.
Crime Ink: Iconic (An Anthology of Crime Fiction Inspired by Famous Queer Icons)
In case you still want more–and why wouldn’t you–here is an entire collection of stories by and about queer authors and characters. The genre of the stories strays a little from amateur detectives, which I’ve concentrated on here. The collection does have cozy mysteries, but there are also noir, psychological thrillers, and police procedurals. Go to town and read your fill!
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