One thing that I have always both loved and hated about writing historical mysteries, particularly mysteries featuring queer characters, is the way I inevitably end up tracing how far we have and have not come. As I researched and plotted my most recent novel, Last Dance Before Dawn, I was all too aware of what would be waiting for my characters in the next decade. In 1925 my sleuth, Vivian Kelly, was dancing the Charleston, falling in and out of love, and solving (or occasionally committing) crimes. Queer nightlife was thriving in New York City during the Jazz Age, so even if LGBTQ+ folks like Vivian couldn’t be fully out in their everyday lives, there were spaces like the speakeasy I created, the Nightingale, where they could find community and love in relative safety and openness.
But even as I wrote and celebrated that, I could look ahead to the 1930s and know that the backlash would begin, as it so often does, after a financial disaster. The fear and struggle that followed the Great Depression would create a culture that turned away from the more open and accepting 1920s, tracing a direct line through the Lavender Scare of the 1950s to the homophobia of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It’s a pattern that any reader of historical fiction has seen play out on the page. It’s one we’re seeing play out in real life right now.
But as we grapple with that backlash in our own lives, one thing that brings me joy and hope is the many writers who are sharing queer stories and the way the mystery community has begun to embrace and celebrate them. Crime fiction is, after all, about imagining a better world than the one we’re currently living in. The writers who pioneered the genre back in the Golden Age of detective fiction were responding the trauma of World War I, trying to imagine order and logic back into their world through puzzles that could be unraveled and cases that could be solved. Today, mystery writers, especially queer writers, are doing the same.
Maybe in real life the killer wouldn’t be caught. Maybe what is right or just isn’t actually what is legal. Maybe when the people we love are threatened, we don’t know how to protect them. But in mysteries, we can imagine what it would look like if the opposite was true: the real villain is caught, we keep the people we love safe, and justice prevails—even if our sleuths sometimes go outside the law to make it happen.
If you’d like to imagine a better, more just world and enjoy some phenomenal queer mysteries in the process, I’ve got just the reading list for you. From YA thrillers to modern cozies to historical sleuths, there’s a queer mystery out there for every reader.
Hall of Mirrors by John Copenhaver
In the midst of the Lavender Scare, Lionel Kane’s writing partner and lover is killed in a house fire. When the police declare the death a suicide, Lionel refuses to believe them and sets out to uncover the truth. But he doesn’t know that his search will bring him into the path of a serial killer protected by powerful forces in the government.
The Payback Girls by Alex Travis
This YA thriller follows three high school girls who discover they’re all dating the same boy. When that boy is found bloody and unconscious in a locker room, all three are suspects. The girls have to form an alliance to clear their names, but two of them might be falling in love, one of them doesn’t remember what happened the night of the crime, and all of them are keeping secrets.
Bury Me When I’m Dead by Cheryl A. Head
The 2016 novel begins the six books of the Charlie Mack Motown Mysteries, which are pioneering books of the PI genre for their Black, queer, female lead. Charlie Mack has built a successful PI firm for herself in Detroit. But when a missing persons case takes her to Alabama, she finds herself digging into the long-buried secrets of a southern patriarch with a dangerous past.
Pride or Die by CL Montblanc
Dark and funny at the same time, this high school-set mystery follows the members of an LGBTQ+ club at a Texas school who find themselves the prime suspects in an attempted murder. The kids band together to clear their names before graduation, but the real culprit is closing in. If they don’t piece things together in time, one of them might become the next target.
Dead in the Frame by Stephen Spotswood
The newest release in the 1940s-set Pentecost and Parker Mysteries sees New York’s finest private detective, Lillian Pentecost, arrested on suspicion of murder. It’s up to her right-hand woman, Willowjean “Will” Parker, to clear her boss’s name. But Lillian has enemies waiting for her at the House of D, New York’s infamous women’s prison. If Will can’t solve the case in time, Lillian might not survive long enough to make it to trial.
Cirque du Slay by Rob Osler
This cozy and funny mystery features quirky amateur sleuths Hayden and Hollister and a high-profile murder at a circus. When the owner of the upscale, artistic circus Mysterium is found murdered before a show. Hayden and Hollister are determined to clear the name of the prime suspect, who is also their long-time frenemy. The suspects range from a cowgirl sharp-shooter to a sexy troop of male acrobats. But in a circus, everyone is putting on a show, and everyone has secrets that they’d rather keep hidden.
Waters of Destruction by Leslie Karst
Retired caterer Valerie Corbin and her wife move to Hawai’i and are just starting to get settled in when the bartender at their new watering hole goes missing. The bar’s owner is one of their few friends in their new home, so Valerie agrees to track the missing employee down. It seems like a great way to meet people and learn the local scene, until the bartender’s dead body is found at the bottom of a waterfall and Valerie gets pulled into the case.
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