Golden Age of Detective Fiction

Happy Pride! One of my many jobs during college was working as a beta reader and editor for a Lesbian Romance book publisher. Unfortunately the publisher is no longer in business, but the owners and snior editors gave me my start in the publishing works and I am so grateful for their guidance and experience.

I’ve oput together a list of some of my favorite LGBTQ+ mysteries and invite you to share your favorites in the comments below.

1. Two Rivers Series: (Detective Matthew Venn) by Ann Cleeves

Detective Matthew Venn solves crimes that rock tight-knit communities in the North of Devon. A highly reflective and empathic man, Venn is called to sort out difficult and deeply personal crimes. The mysteries explore his relationship with his husband and provide great depth to Venn’s characte

2. The Vesuvius Club Series: (Lucifer Box) by Mark Gatiss

Mark Gatiss’s series is a campy, entertaining spy adventure that introduces us to Lucifer Box, a detective with the wit of Oscar Wilde and the prowess of Ian Fleming’s Bond. Box’s escapades in Edwardian England, assassinating evildoers for His Majesty as a deadly special agent, are a delightful read. Light and just a shade raunchy, this series is a perfect choice for a steamy summer day.

3. Kate Martinelli Mysteries by Laurie R. King

Laurie R. King’s series, a notable contender for the Edgar Award, is a significant milestone in Lesbian representation within the mystery genre. Penned in the 1990s, these books delve into the challenges faced by LGBTQ+ individuals during that era. They serve as a valuable time capsule, offering a glimpse into the representation landscape of the community in mainstream media, while the mysteries themselves remain as compelling as ever.

4. The Dinner Lady Detectives Series by Hannah Hendy

For fans of The Marlow Murder Club or The Thursday Murder Club, The Dinner Lady Detectives will be a thrilling addition to your reading list. Margery and Clementine, two older ladies, work at a lovely school and live in a modest house. When one of their colleagues is brutally killed in the walk-in, this septuagenarian lesbian couple takes it upon themselves to investigate, leading to madcap adventures in their little slice of heaven. The couple’s relationship, a definite plot point, is beautifully portrayed throughout the series. We witness their love grow and deepen, culminating in a heartwarming wedding as the series progresses.

5. Secrets and Scrabble Series by John Lanyon

In this cozy mystery series, readers follow the adventures of Ellery Page, a struggling screenwriter, as he settles into his new life after inheriting a failing bookstore and a crumbling mansion in Pirate’s Cove on Buck Island in Rhode Island. Full of humor, romance, and swashbuckling adventure, this delightful series is sure to entertain.

6. The Boy in the Red Dress by Kristin Lambert (2020)

Goodreads synopsis:

A Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue meets Miss Fisher’s Murder Mystery in this rollicking romp of truth, lies, and troubled pasts.

New Year’s Eve, 1929.

Millie is running the show at the Cloak & Dagger, a swinging speakeasy in the French Quarter, while her aunt is out of town. The new year is just around the corner, and all of New Orleans is out to celebrate, but even wealthy partiers’ diamond earrings can’t outshine the real star of the night: the boy in the red dress. Marion is the club’s star performer and his fans are legion–if mostly underground.

When a young socialite wielding a photograph of Marion starts asking questions, Millie wonders if she’s just another fan. But then her body is found crumpled in the courtyard, dead from an apparent fall off the club’s balcony, and all signs point to Marion as the murderer. Millie knows he’s innocent, but local detectives aren’t so easily convinced.

As she chases clues that lead to cemeteries and dead ends, Millie’s attention is divided between the wry and beautiful Olive, a waitress at the Cloak & Dagger, and Bennie, the charming bootlegger who’s offered to help her solve the case. The clock is ticking for the fugitive Marion, but the truth of who the killer is might be closer than Millie thinks..

7. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (2002)

Goodreads synopsis:

Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a “baby farmer,” who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby’s household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves—fingersmiths—for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home.

One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives—Gentleman, an elegant con man, who carries with him an enticing proposition for Sue: If she wins a position as the maid to Maud Lilly, a naïve gentlewoman, and aids Gentleman in her seduction, then they will all share in Maud’s vast inheritance. Once the inheritance is secured, Maud will be disposed of—passed off as mad, and made to live out the rest of her days in a lunatic asylum.

With dreams of paying back the kindness of her adopted family, Sue agrees to the plan. Once in, however, Sue begins to pity her helpless mark and care for Maud Lilly in unexpected ways…But no one and nothing is as it seems in this Dickensian novel of thrills and reversals.

8. The Verifiers by Jane Pek (2022)

Goodreads synopsis:

Introducing a sharp-witted heroine for the 21st century: a new amateur sleuth exploring the landscape—both physical and virtual—of New York in a debut novel about love, technology, and murder.

Claudia Lin is used to disregarding her fractious family’s model-minority expectations: she has no interest in finding either a conventional career or a nice Chinese boy. She’s also used to keeping secrets from them, such as that she prefers girls—and that she’s just been stealth-recruited by Veracity, a referrals-only online-dating detective agency.

A lifelong mystery reader who wrote her senior thesis on Jane Austen, Claudia believes she’s landed her ideal job. But when a client goes missing, Claudia breaks protocol to investigate—and uncovers a maelstrom of personal and corporate deceit. Part literary mystery, part family story, The Verifiers is a clever and incisive examination of how technology shapes our choices, and the nature of romantic love in the digital age.

9. The Blue Carron Mysteries Series by Abigail Pladgett

A social psychologist, Blue Carron, has buried herself in the desert after her lover left her with a paltry handwritten note two years ago. She’s been too busy fixing up the dilapidated motel and helping businesses understand why people steal when an older woman named Muffin Crandell confesses to killing and dismembering a petty thief. The accused brother begs Carron to look into the case, and she is sucked into a whole other world- where power, influence, and small acts of kindness and cruelty are spinning a deadly web with Crandell at the center.

10. Vera Kelly Series by Rosalie Knecht

Vera Kelly, recruited as a wiretapping, super spy, is working for the CIA during the sixties. Watch her hone her craft, topple governments, get in and out of jams in this coming of age series.

Did I miss any of your favorite LGBTQ+ mysteries? I have so many that a part 2 is coming later this month.