Gay detective series
Decades Don Strachey Mysteries: An Actual Gay Detective
Based on a series of books written by Richard Stevenson starting in the first s and continuing to the present, with the latest novel being released in , four movies for Here TV were produced between and The films starred Chad Allen as Don Strachey, a gay detective in Albany, New York. Chad is a former child actor having main cast credits in s Our House, s My Two Dads, and to s Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. As well as guest starring roles on several television series throughout the s, 90s and s. In , Chad was outed as gay by the U.S. tabloid “The Globe”, which published photos of him kissing another man. Forced into the limelight, Allen became an activist for the LGBT community.
Gay detective fiction isn’t new, but it isn’t exactly mainstream. George Baxt is credited with being the first writer to publish a series of books with a homosexual sleuth as the lead in Joseph Hansen is probably the best known author having created the Dave Brandstetter mysteries in , which continued through the s. There are many more, but few ha
GunnShots: Celebrating Great Gay Mysteries
Culture critic Jillian Steinhauer has an online article “ Reasons Why We’re Fascinated by Lists” (The Awl, 7 Feb. ). She notes that list-making is “an act of curation,” and she quotes Andrew Sarris that, “with a best list, a critic puts his or her tastes on the line.” But nowhere among her reasons does she challenge that celebration can be a motive. Yet isn’t that what was going on at the finish of the last century when we got lists of the best of everything imaginable? A personal celebration led to this column. The day before (appropriately enough) Thanksgiving, my copies of the modern and expanded edition of my book The Lgbtq+ Male Sleuth in Type and Film: A History and Annotated Bibliography (Scarecrow Press, ) arrived.
The Lgbtq+ Male Sleuth in Copy and Film
As I leafed through the pages, some kind of ritual seemed called for. I started mentally making lists. My ten-best gay film mysteries will appear in a forthcoming column. Here I look at the type portion of the guide (which, of course, is itself one giant list with numbered entries). T
In the past limited years, books written by and about queer characters hold become more noticeable to the general reading public. Gradually, straight, cisgender readers are discovering the pleasure of reading books by authors whose identities are different from their own. This is true in the mystery and thriller reading world as well.
In my fresh 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 investigate writing from the closet, the complexity of inventing a false persona to sell books, which in the s was often necessary to find broad appeal to consumers, not to refer to avoid organism 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 yearn to read LGBTQIA+ characters (assuming a book ban doesn’t block their ability to access these books).
Of course, prejudice still exists, and the grooves of unconscious bias get time to change; the specious plan th
Gay & Lesbian Detective Novels
The Gay Detective Novel - Part 1
© by Lori L. Lake, Reprinted from Crime Spree Magazine, Nov/Dec
CLICK HERE For Part 2 - The Lesbian Detective Novel
One of the great things about fiction is how cultural issues of the morning get drawn into plots and themes. This is particularly true of the mystery and of crime fiction. The gothic novels of the 18th and 19th century led to the creation of main characters whose major role was to sniff out guilty parties and solve crimes. Poe's Auguste Dupin and Doyle's Sherlock Holmes set the tone first for models of detection and the types of sleuths who ferreted out criminals. But none of those characters were same-sex attracted.
By the early 20th century, mystery writers were focusing upon armchair detection, "murder in the manor," locked rooms, red herrings, aristocrats, and the unseen terrors found in sleepy villages. The plots and themes of authors appreciate Agatha Christie, John Dickson Carr, Dorothy Sayers, Nicholas Blake, and many others reflected American and British society of that second. The pulp nov