Lesbian Mystery Novels
Jul. 12th, 2023 06:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeMori: I've been reading a bunch of lesbian mystery novels from the 1980s and '90s. It was exactly what I wanted: episodic stories of lesbians and other women being flawed and imperfect and teaming up to solve problems, nontraditional spelling of the word "woman," and older protagonists. And since mysteries by definition have their main plots be, you know, the mystery, it meant romance and coming out were subplots at best.
I also wanted older stuff, for a couple reasons. First, my buddystoryheight had a bunch of them onhand. Second, it's always nice to remember that we've been around for a long time. And third, mysteries are the perfect medium for exploring the political fights of the time, and reading older stuff give me some distance. It's easier to laugh about the political fights of yesteryear! Here's some of the ones I've read lately:
Mary Morell, Final Session (1991): A scummy therapist is found murdered in her San Antonio office, and it's up to cop Lucia Ramos to find out what happened. A bit roughly written, but cathartic to read. Plus it has a median love interest, which was a pleasant surprise, and she's treated as a competent, cool person! Pluralstories has the CWs and stuff.
Barbara Wilson (now Sjoholm), A Murder In the Collective (1984): when a leftist printing collective considers merging with a lesbian typesetting group, emotions run high and conflicting accusations of bigotry run back and forth--but when someone turns up dead and the typesetting office is vandalized, one of the collective members has to get to the bottom of it. It's nice to know that political fighting haven't changed that much in forty years, and I enjoyed this enough that I went and got the other two books in this series. I'll let you know how they go. This one's apparently been republished as an ebook recently! It's also on Bookshare.
Vicki P. McConnell, Double Daughter (1989): When old queer college friends come together to celebrate a member's birthday, vicious assaults and vandalism ruin the happiness. With one member in a coma, possibly terminal, they have to find out who hurt their friend and make things right. This might've been my favorite of the bunch, because it involved queer friends ganging together to protect each other and solve the mystery.
Carol Schmidt, Sweet Cherry Wine (1994): Man, I wanted to like this one more than I did; an older bartender protagonist who's keeping sober sounded up my alley. But the ending kinda fell down on me and it got grimly unpleasant.
Marsha Mildon, Fighting for Air (1995): Canadian scuba crime! This one was well enough written, but oh man, both the protagonist and her love interest are dealing with paralytic depression through parts of the book and it was rough to read. It gets pretty grim at parts, and the line, "What the hell goes wrong with you? Can't you think of something normal like asking me for help?" is extremely relevant.
I gave Stoner McTavish a shot, but it was a little too whacky for me. And now I'm working on Mary Wings's She Came Too Late, which takes place in Boston and was written by a cartoonist we knew of.
I also wanted older stuff, for a couple reasons. First, my buddy
storyheight had a bunch of them onhand. Second, it's always nice to remember that we've been around for a long time. And third, mysteries are the perfect medium for exploring the political fights of the time, and reading older stuff give me some distance. It's easier to laugh about the political fights of yesteryear! Here's some of the ones I've read lately:Mary Morell, Final Session (1991): A scummy therapist is found murdered in her San Antonio office, and it's up to cop Lucia Ramos to find out what happened. A bit roughly written, but cathartic to read. Plus it has a median love interest, which was a pleasant surprise, and she's treated as a competent, cool person! Pluralstories has the CWs and stuff.
Barbara Wilson (now Sjoholm), A Murder In the Collective (1984): when a leftist printing collective considers merging with a lesbian typesetting group, emotions run high and conflicting accusations of bigotry run back and forth--but when someone turns up dead and the typesetting office is vandalized, one of the collective members has to get to the bottom of it. It's nice to know that political fighting haven't changed that much in forty years, and I enjoyed this enough that I went and got the other two books in this series. I'll let you know how they go. This one's apparently been republished as an ebook recently! It's also on Bookshare.
Vicki P. McConnell, Double Daughter (1989): When old queer college friends come together to celebrate a member's birthday, vicious assaults and vandalism ruin the happiness. With one member in a coma, possibly terminal, they have to find out who hurt their friend and make things right. This might've been my favorite of the bunch, because it involved queer friends ganging together to protect each other and solve the mystery.
Carol Schmidt, Sweet Cherry Wine (1994): Man, I wanted to like this one more than I did; an older bartender protagonist who's keeping sober sounded up my alley. But the ending kinda fell down on me and it got grimly unpleasant.
Marsha Mildon, Fighting for Air (1995): Canadian scuba crime! This one was well enough written, but oh man, both the protagonist and her love interest are dealing with paralytic depression through parts of the book and it was rough to read. It gets pretty grim at parts, and the line, "What the hell goes wrong with you? Can't you think of something normal like asking me for help?" is extremely relevant.
I gave Stoner McTavish a shot, but it was a little too whacky for me. And now I'm working on Mary Wings's She Came Too Late, which takes place in Boston and was written by a cartoonist we knew of.
