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Life’s Little Lesbian Mysteries: The good ol’ days

When I was a young lesbian in the late ’70s and ’80s, hungry for books that reflected my own life, lesbian mysteries were like manna from heaven. Characters like Kate Delafield and others were not only lesbians, they were lesbians with the skills and grit ample enough to right wrongs, change circumstances, and take the moral high ground during a time far less accepting of lesbians than the present.

That was thrilling, of course. But when the authors also wrote about the personal lives of these strong women, no amount of force could have ripped the books from my hands. Whether the protagonist was a professional crime fighter or an amateur sleuth, she had lovers and ex-lovers, circles of gay and lesbian friends, bars, break-ups, coming out traumas. She had sex. It was the lesbian part of lesbian mystery that made me grip the book tightly, yet the two were inextricably bound. I’d always loved mysteries. Put lesbians in them and it was a serious kind of love. What is amazing to me now is to remember what a magical feeling that was to read tales about women who loved other women. It would seem quaint if it weren’t so sad.

It was the lesbian part of lesbian mystery that made me grip the book tightly, yet the two were inextricably bound. I’d always loved mysteries. Put lesbians in them and it was a serious kind of love.
While I wasn’t aware of it at the time, those heady years of lesbian mystery became the subject of many academic studies. Who knew that the humble mystery novel could be so reflective of a whole cultural and political milieu? I recently read an article on the lesbian mysteries of that “golden” period that deconstructed the genre with language that could only be appreciated by graduate students and dissertation committees. But let’s avoid all that like the plague, shall we? Here’s what I want to get across to you. Lesbian mysteries were popular then and they are popular now, but the difference in style between the eras is striking.

The first lesbian mystery novel published in this country was M.F. Beale‘s Angel Dance (1977). It was saturated with the lesbian-feminism of its time, which made it strident and a bit of a heavy go, or at least that is how I remember it. But I was thrilled by it, nonetheless. The system was the enemy our heroine must battle — the misogyny, the homophobia, the capitalism, you name it. If you were a writer of lesbian genre fiction in those days, there was an imperative to write as a social realist. This continued into the ’80s, with decreasing levels of polemic, when many lesbian mysteries were being published by a growing number of lesbian presses. The need to hear our voices was strong, and writers and publishers joined forces to fill the void.

The early ’80s saw the publication of Amateur City, which introduced author Katherine Forrest‘s series heroine, Kate Delafield, a homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police. This groundbreaking mystery series in many ways perfectly captured the time, when lesbian-feminism was giving way as a theme to the fight out of the closet and into social visibility and acceptance, a fight that was a long way from being won. Kate Delafield, in fact, remains rather famously closeted throughout the series, an accurate depiction of a real lesbian working in a homophobic organization, rather than the lone hero in mainstream crime fiction who never remains constrained. And this indeed is one of the things that has characterized the lesbian mystery; its protagonists are relatable to the lesbians reading them. Katherine Forrest recently told me that what she feels set the lesbian series sleuth of the time apart from her mainstream counterpart was that “our detective characters were dynamic, they tended to change and grow over the course of the series, as opposed to most mysteries where the main character doesn’t change all that much from book to book.” Kate was destined to grow as an individual much more quickly than the system she worked in would grow in its liberality. Living in the closet becomes more unbearable for Kate as time passes, just as it did for all of us reading the series.

Another series author writing in the ’80s (and today), Claire McNab, explains it like this: “In the ’80s, most lesbian literature was directed towards an audience that was largely in the closet, hence many of the novels dealt with the perils and rewards of coming out. The heterosexual world then seemed largely ignorant about gays in general, and what straight people believed about us was often clichéd or derogatory. Going back and reading some of that literature now, illustrates a world view that, judged by present day social mores, represents the dark ages.”

I remember reading the books and feeling the sense of relief that comes with shared hardship. I felt less alone when I read fiction about characters oppressed by the same things I was. But unlike my friends and I, the lesbians in these mystery novels often kicked ass in a way we could only dream of, striking a blow for what we had only the smallest hope of — transparency and acceptance.

And did I mention that they also had sex? They did, and it was luscious and my favorite part of every book. It was restrained, but it was powerful. I will make the not so daring leap as to say that the way sex and lesbian relationships are depicted may be the biggest difference between the mysteries of the ’80s – ’90s and the mysteries being published today.

Ellen Hart, who began writing her Jane Lawless series in the late 1980s (with the most recent Lawless novel currently short listed for a Lambda award), observes: “Lesbian mysteries remain popular, although I think lesbian romance has overtaken the lead, and has begun to influence the way lesbian mysteries are written today. Very few lesbian mystery novels are published now that don’t include a central romance.” Not only do they have a central romance, but they have lots of sex. This isn’t the case with every mystery written today, but it’s a significant trend. With the emphasis moving away from the intricacies of plot, which are the norm for mysteries, to the romantic arc of the main characters, it’s almost impossible to compare the two eras stylistically. While the books of the earlier time were revolutionary in that they brought us lesbian heroines, they also conformed to the traditional mystery format in many ways — a lone hero, a formidable antagonist, a piece by piece revelation of fact until the mystery is solved and the hero vanquished, and a complicated plot in which to accomplish all that.

Many, if not most, of the mysteries coming out of the main lesbian presses these days are no longer as concerned with social issues. I wrote a fairly traditional whodunit called Veritas, in which a college dean and a small town police chief solve a series of campus murders. My brother read it and said, “Everyone in that town is a lesbian!” Well, that wasn’t exactly true, but the point is that it didn’t occur to me as I was writing the book that my characters would be anything but out and comfortable, and that their world, like that of most lesbians, would have a lot of other lesbians in it, and the straight people around them would be more or less accepting of them.

Not only were the characters living in such an atmosphere, but the villain was someone who was murderous over tenure, not something related to homophobia and the oppressive system. In fact, at the risk of slightly giving away the ending to my own book, the murderer was a lesbian, which might be a complete reversal of what would have been written in that earlier time.

A lesbian mystery today can be and is about anything an author wants to write about, and the only thing lesbian about it may be that the main character is lesbian (and has lots of lesbian sex). I think it can be argued that in the earlier era, what made a book a lesbian mystery was how the hero’s lesbianism impacted the plot. The cases she worked on, the forces she encountered, all had some bearing on her lesbianism.

Sometimes, as Ellen Hart observed, a poorly constructed mystery was hung around the neck of a feminist polemic, while today, sometimes poorly constructed mysteries are propping up what are essentially romance novels. Perhaps for many writers, just telling our stories as lesbians was and is more important than the conventions of the mystery genre itself; we’ve molded it into whatever shape fits the time and the taste of not only the writer, but, presumably, the readers as well.

Perhaps for many writers, just telling our stories as lesbians was and is more important than the conventions of the mystery genre itself; we’ve molded it into whatever shape fits the time and the taste of not only the writer, but, presumably, the readers as well.
Bold Strokes Books publisher Len Barot says: “The work of KV Forrest, JM Redmann and others brought the ‘lesbian hero’ as an archetype onto the stage. These new heroes gave us the positive, affirming reflections of ourselves we had long been missing in popular culture. The mystery and romantic intrigue genres remain among the most popular in lesbian fiction today as the role of women in our world expands to include heroes of all forms.” The other big difference between then and now is the sheer number of lesbian mystery/action/intrigue/suspense novels being published today. I clung to M.F. Beale’s Angel Dance in 1977 not so much because I loved the book, but because it was the only game in town. Now there are extremely active publishers of lesbian books such as Bella Books and Bold Strokes Books and others who publish scores of novels each year, many of them in these genres. There are works from seasoned authors such as JM Redmann, Claire McNab and Ellen Hart (St. Martin’s Press), where the traditional mystery is expertly done, and their series characters dearly loved.

There are also untold numbers of books by authors writing everything from the amateur sleuth with a cat whodunit to wildly sexy vampire thrillers. And they are all, in their own way, lesbian mysteries. That today’s reader has moved from the position of taking what she can get to picking only what she wants is a sign of triumph in itself.

 

Anne Laughlin is the author of “Sometimes Quickly” and “Veritas,” as well as many short stories published in a number of lesbian anthologies. “Veritas” won a 2010 Goldie award for Best Mystery.

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