With the exuberance of Pride Month in June, it’s easy to get excited about new queer crime fiction in the summer months. But, with shortening days, ubiquitous Pumpkin Spice lattes, and of course, Halloween—arguably the queerest holiday of the year—the fall is the perfect time to pick up a mystery or thriller exploring the complex and layered lives of LGBTQ+ characters.
This quarter, Queer Crime Writers* will highlight this season’s new releases featuring characters including a crime-solving chef, a music school head accused of murder, a gay PI in 1950s San Francisco, a lesbian PI in contemporary New Orleans, a young goth tattoo artist avenging her girlfriend’s murder, and a cross-dressing runaway slave in pre-Civil War Philadelphia. The rich and innovative characterizations—a hallmark of this subgenre—are paired with gripping plots and sharp prose one expects of crime fiction. Enjoy diving into these page-turners while you kick back, grab a handful of candy corn, and sip those lattes. If you love a book, tell a friend—in fact, tell a hundred friends!
*Queer Crime Writers is an organization that advocates for LGBTQIA+ crime fiction authors and creates community for them.
August
A Sense of Murder, Leslie Karst
Karst returns with the sixth installment of the Chef Sally Solar series, twice nominated for a Lefty Award for Best Humorous Mystery. A Sense of Murder is just as much culinary fun as the Santa Cruz chef juggles the seasonal crowd at Gauguin, her French-Polynesian restaurant, and volunteers for a fundraising meal at a new hip restaurant and bookshop, Pages and Plums. At the fundraiser dinner, a signed box set by the renowned chef Julia Child is auctioned to raise money for the homeless and seniors. When the dining room manager is found dead, and the precious books are gone, Sally finds herself neck-deep in a murder investigation.
Touch of the Bone, Baxter Clare Trautman
Trautman’s long-running, Lambda Award-nominated series featuring LAPD Lt. Franco has seen our hero through many tautly written investigations and compelling personal transformations. In Touch of the Bone, we find Franco, “Frank,” having left the police to become a healer, a change she’s still adjusting to. But, when her late healing mentor leaves behind a journal that reveals a murder, Frank’s cop instincts kick in, and she pursues the killer, contrary to her new path in life and further complicated by the emergence of a new lover. Will she see justice done or let go of her hold on the investigation?
September
Transitory, J.M. Redmann
When Micky Knight witnesses a hit-and-run that kills a Black transgender activist in New Orleans, she finds it impossible to leave the investigation to the police, who blow off the victim as a sex worker not worthy of their effort to investigate. The woman is unidentified except for an appointment card with Micky’s ex-lover Cordelia, a physician with a health collective. For Micky, any interaction with Cordelia is like opening a still-fresh wound, something she’d like to avoid at all costs. This latest installment in award-winning Redmann’s fantastic series shows that Mickey, now a little older and creakier, will do whatever it takes to find justice for the victim, as she always has.
Stemming the Tide, Rebecca K. Jones
The second in the Mackenzie Wilson series by Goldie-Award finalist Rebecca K. Jones finds Tucson prosecutor Mack Wilson recovering after a traumatic attack, back with her ex-girlfriend, Dr. Anna Lapin, and navigating her new job in public relations. When Mack’s business card is found on the body of a murdered woman, she’s a suspect, a revelation that shakes Anna’s trust. Soon, another body is discovered, and Mack must team up with an old friend and track down the killer, exonerate herself, and save her relationship. She’s racing to save her life and hold on to the woman she loves.
The Road to Montepulciano, Garrick Jones
In Australian author Garrick Jones’s new historical mystery set in 1950, Damson O’Reilly arrives in Siena, Italy, two years after finishing his tour of duty in the Occupational Forces in Japan. Sight unseen at a local auction, he buys an abandoned Tuscan farmhouse on the road between Siena and Montepulciano called La Mensola, in which he aims to write, paint, and start a peaceful new life. He’s prepared for a semi-ruin he has to fix up; he’s totally unprepared for three dead bodies.
October
A Murder of Crows, Dharma Kelleher
Kelleher’s latest, A Murder of Crows, is the second in the Avery Byrne thriller series. A young tattoo artist Avery Byrne, reeling from the horrific death of her girlfriend and a stint underground to avoid her killers, returns to work only to learn about the death of a close friend, Hatchett. Avery refuses to believe it was an accident. Hatchett had been a member of the Crows, a gearhead gang who raced vintage hot rods through Phoenix’s streets. Avery teams up with Roz, who operates a spy shop within the city’s street-racing scene, to uncover the truth. The body count rises as Avery finds herself torn between grief and feelings for Roz as they maneuver the underground world of steel and rubber.
Spinner of Tales, Richard Hall
The first openly gay critic to be elected to the National Book Critics Circle, Hall’s first mystery novel, The Butterscotch Prince, was published in 1975 to great acclaim. Thirty years since his death, his second mystery novel, The Spinner of Tales, is available for the first time. In it, Dr. Bruce Pittman runs a successful music school in New York. David Donnenfield arrived as a fresh-faced, tentative nineteen-year-old with talent and ambition. Now, he is a celebrated musician—until he’s charged with the murder of Miles Halloran. As Bruce investigates, darker elements of Miles’ life come to the surface. Worse, AIDS-related “opportunistic infections” are taking a toll, sapping Bruce’s energy and placing him in and out of the hospital. His health is not helped by taking trips to Miles’ second home in Puerto Rico, dealing with the politics of New York publishing, or discovering drug trades and money laundering.
Somewhere in the Gray Area, Jeffrey Davenport
In Davenport’s romance thriller debut, self-assured student James Rhodes is taking college by storm, thriving in an undergraduate programming internship, and pining for his crush, who he’s sure will return his love, in time. He’s not daunted by anything because he has a plan for everything—and, of course, everything goes as planned, right? He doesn’t know that a crime will take the lives of his high-profile boss and fellow interns, and he’ll have to sort through dark secrets and a police coverup to find the truth.
The Bell in the Fog, Lev A.C. Rosen
In Rosen’s follow-up to the Lambda and Anthony-award nominated Lavender House, Evander “Andy” Mills sets out as a private investigator in 1952 in San Francisco. Although he’s proven his skill as a detective in the closed world of the first novel, being an ex-cop puts him at a disadvantage: on principle, the queer community doesn’t trust cops, even gay ex-cops. When an old flame, who disappeared from his life years ago, turns up wanting him to investigate blackmail, he balks, but he needs the money. To solve the case, he has to confront the closeted world of the Navy, where gay men walk the line between being themselves and having their lives destroyed by a homophobic system. Andy must face his past as he pursues the culprit, making the solution to the crime personal and the stakes high.
November
A Season in Delhi, Scott Alexander Hess
Lambda Award-finalist Hess’s novella is the first in Rebel Satori’s new Bijou Book collection, focusing on short works of fiction. It opens with a newly married gay couple, Brant and Lloyd, as they take in the colorful and overwhelming atmosphere of Delhi—think E. M. Forsters’ A Passage to India—but soon things take a dark turn when Brant’s infidelity is exposed, and Lloyd leaves him. In the wake of the breakup, Brant discovers the long-buried journal of a diplomat’s wife, Carol, in the garden, recounting her steamy love affair circa 1950. As Brant connects with Carol’s story and then Carol herself, the truth of each affair unravels with a mystery plot’s pacing, reminiscent of a Graham Greene novel, exposing complex moral dilemmas and asking the question: What is forgivable?
Leverage, EJ Noyes
In Leverage, the second installment of the Noyes series featuring Intelligence Analyst Lexie Martin, Lexie goes on the run from her own government after obtaining volatile information from the secret organization, but when she eventually turns herself in, she’s mysteriously not punished, and freed—why? Despite the lingering confusion, she begins dating Sophia, the woman she’s been pursuing, and everything seems okay for now. But she’s snubbed the President, and he will not let her get away with it. Soon she’s reassigned to the field amid hostile territory; clearly, his underhanded punishment for her embarrassing him, and all she wants to do is make it home and back to Sophia.
December
Two Wings to Hide My Face, Penny Mickelbury
Award-winning author Penny Mickelbury’s 16th novel, a follow-up to To Wings to Fly Away, takes us to pre-Civil War Philadelphia, where both runaway slaves and free Blacks are being hunted by slave-catcher gangs and sold to slave owners in the South. With vicious anti-Black hatred on the rise, war close at hand, and even White allies in danger, Genie Oliver—who wears men’s clothing to keep herself safe and move about with a degree of agency in the antebellum North—decides with her found family to trek to Canada to live a better life, but will they make it? With danger crossing her path at every turn, they are in a race for their lives.
