Gay mystery romance novels
In the past few years, books written by and about queer characters include become more visible to the general reading widespread. Gradually, straight, cisgender readers are discovering the pleasure of reading books by authors whose identities are different from their retain. This is true in the mystery and thriller reading world as well.
In my new novel, Hall of Mirrors, a mystery set in Washington, D.C., about two gay writers who co-author hard-boiled detective fiction under the macho moniker Ray Kane, I explore writing from the closet, the complexity of inventing a false persona to sell books, which in the s was often necessary to verb broad appeal to consumers, not to mention to avoid being discriminated against and persecuted. Thankfully, today, things have changed (for the most part), and readers of all types are reaching for queer books precisely because they want to read LGBTQIA+ characters (assuming a manual ban doesn’t block their ability to access these books).
Of course, prejudice still exists, and the grooves of unconscious bias hold time to change; the specious idea th
9 of the Best LGBTQ+ Mystery Books You Won't Be Able to Lay Down
Before The Bell in the Fog, Lev Ac Rosen’s Lavender House was Andy Mills’ first mystery to solve as a private investigator, a case rife with old-money secrets, queer soap-making heiresses, and murder.
It’s the s, and there are not many places in the queer community where one can go and be unapologetically themselves. Lavender House and its matriarch are the exception.
The estate’s staff and residents are free to live their truth within the elegant walls, but when a mysterious death occurs on the property, and there are no outsiders to blame, suspicions arise about a murderer in their midst.
With historically accurate depictions of queer culture in the s, Rosen dives into a world of money, adoration, and power hidden within the walls of Lavender House, and the adj fates that await its residents outside the gates.
Task #3 of the Study Harder Challenge is “read a queer mystery” and I am happy to report that I had to perform to narrow this list down. Finding LGBTQ rep in mystery—or any other genre—shouldn’t require intense sleuthing, but it wasn’t that long ago that the mystery genre lacked diversity on every level. While we still have a long way to travel towards parity in queer representation, it is really nice to have several titles to recommend in a list like this and not have it be the same handful of titles recommended over and over again.
I have several series starters and a few standalones to recommend for this Read Harder task, all by and about queer people. Most of the titles are from the last few years, and a couple are releases. In historical mysteries, we’ll travel to Georgian London,s Harlem, and 19th Century Chicago. In contemporary mysteries, we’ll head to Salt Lake City game shop, an exclusive boarding academy, the London drag scene, and more. Get ready to chase down clues, map out theories, and figure out whodunit. That’s right, folks: be gay, solve crimes.
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