Given
this history, it might be expected that lesbians would be
easily found in mainstream crime fiction, but mysteries
featuring lesbian detectives, while more common than twenty
years ago, still remain relatively rare outside of gay and
lesbian presses. To try and get to the bottom of this, I
interviewed a handful of successful mystery authors, and
found they differed not only on why lesbian detectives are
so rare in mainstream fiction, but on whether "lesbian
mystery" is even a category.
Although
critics and publishers are fairly comfortable with categorizing
the “lesbian mystery” as a distinct subgenre
of crime fiction, authors tend to disagree. Lori
Lake, author of the Dez Reilly
mysteries, questions, “I don't feel there is a distinct
subgenre of lesbian mystery because what would it be a subgenre
of?—the mainstream novels that tend to enjoy more
widespread readership?” But Ellen Hart, author of
the Jane Lawless mystery series, points out that “the
GLBT community recognizes it that way with the Lambda Literary
Awards” (this year's Best Lesbian Mystery award went
to Elizabeth Sims's mystery novel Damn
Straight).
Hart’s
comment speaks to the fact that while publishers,
booksellers, and even the GLBT community recognizes the
existence of lesbian mysteries as a genre—partially
for convenience sake in generating sales and categorizing
the books in bookstores—authors may see the genre
label as more of a restriction than a blessing.
 |
Nicola
Griffith, author of The
Blue Place
and Stay, which feature Norwegian-American
ex-cop Aud Torvingen, feels that lesbian mysteries
focus too much on the “lesbian” aspect
and ignore other, equally important, elements.
“‘Lesbian
mysteries,’” Griffith explains, “that
is, those books which are marketed as such, as opposed
to crime novels that have lesbian characters, are
focused on how the main character feels about being
a lesbian. Often they are concerned with the main
character's coming out. This tends to overwhelm almost
every other aspect of the book."
"They
become, in my opinion, unbalanced.” |
Australian
mystery author Claire McNab notes, “In the past it was
assumed that lesbian novels must contain the requisite amount
of sexual/romantic activity, but as the tendency is now to
include intimate details of characters' relationships in all
mystery writing, this is no longer a defining quality."
But
while these authors do not agree on whether there
really is a "lesbian mystery" genre, none hesitated
to write about a lesbian character from the first page.
“I didn't choose to make Aud a lesbian: I didn't choose
to make her straight,” author Nicola Griffith clarified
when I asked why she chose to make the Aud a lesbian. She
continued, “I've never written about a straight person,
just as I've never written about a man, or a blind person,
or an old person. This is not to say I won't write about
such people, I just haven't so far, because the stories
I've wanted to tell aren't their stories.”
Ellen
Hart responded similarly: “Writing a novel that included
the landscape of my own life just seemed natural. I figured
it might mean the book would never be published, but I wasn't
concerned about that…. The simple answer is, I didn't
want to write myself out of my own book.”
But
being a lesbian is usually only one facet of the characters.
“The themes of my novels are varied," explains
Griffith. They are about "grief, say, or the essential
self, violence versus power, or love and how it changes
us. My novels are not about being a dyke or living in dyke
culture. Yes, Aud's a lesbian (and she has lots of sex)
but she doesn't think about it—she certainly doesn't
agonize about it—she just is.”
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