Gay Detectives Come Out in Mystery Fiction

With the media giving special attention to presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, who is openly gay, I wondered if mystery fiction reflects a similar LGBTQ acceptance. Overall, mystery and crime fiction have been more hospitable to hard-boiled homicide hunters and old lady sleuths than gay detectives or even gay characters, with homosexuality used most often as a plot point about a hidden identity, a lying witness, a family secret/conflict, or a motive for murder. But there are some great mysteries featuring gay detectives out there, such as Jim Morgan Wilson's Benjamin Justice series. The first novel in the series, Simple Justice, which won an Edgar Award for Best First Novel, debuts journalist Justice, disgraced by a Pulitzer-story scandal and mourning the death of his lover, who is pulled out of alcoholic hiding to investigate a seemingly motiveless killing outside a gay bar, a crime with unexpectedly deep personal and political ramifications. Writer and retired attorney Michael Nava, winner of six Lambda Literary Awards for works exploring LGBT themes, offers a series featuring Henry Rios, a gay Latino criminal defense lawyer in Los Angeles. His Rios novels run from The Little Death in 1986 to 2016's Lay Your Sleeping Head. Many reviewers see one of the most seminal gay detectives as Joseph Hansen's insurance investigator Dave Brandstetter. In the 1970 debut novel of the Brandstetter series, Fadeout, an entertainer's car plunges off a bridge, but the body is missing, and Brandstetter's queries convince him the man is still alive and in danger. Another popular mystery series features Katherine V. Forrest's Kate Delafield, a lesbian L.A. homicide detective. Four books in the series have been Lambda Award winners, most recently 2013's High Desert, in which Delafield must confront truths about herself as, a few months into retirement, she obliges her old captain by taking up the hunt for a missing police partner. For more gay detectives, see this list from writer Kristen Lepionka: http://www.criminalelement.com/the-quiltbag-detective-queer-characters-in-crime-fiction-comment-sweepstakes/

Crime Fighters With Across-the-Border Roots

When the political landscape is heated by rhetoric about immigrant crime and border walls, it may be time to remember that mystery fiction has a tradition of sleuths and crime fighters with south-of-the-border heritage. For example, there's Rex Burns' Gabriel Wager, a hard-drinking Mexican-American detective with the Denver police force, introduced in The Alvarez Journal, the Edgar Award-winning first novel of the series. Dell Shannon (aka Elizabeth Linington) debuted her hero, LAPD Homicide Lieutenant Luis Mendoza, in Case Pending and was nominated for an Edgar with the series' Knave of Hearts. But it is probably more illuminating to check out mystery fiction by truly Chicano/Chicana voices. Start with Rudolfo Anaya, born in a rural New Mexico village and famed for the poetic and mystical Bless Me, Ultima. Anaya also has penned mysteries with his special perspective expressed in Sonny Baca, a part-time rodeo rider turned private eye in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who not only seeks to solve crimes but to understand the meaning of his dreams and cultural roots. On the distaff side, there is Lucha Corpi, a Chicana poet and mystery writer born in Mexico. Her first mystery in 1992, Eulogy for a Brown Angel, introduced Gloria Damasco, a Chicana feminist with extra-sensory awareness. Rolando Hinojosa, born in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, debuted his series about Texan Lieutenant Detective Rafe Buenrostro of the Belken County Homicide Squad with 1972's Partners in Crime. Breaking more than ethnic barriers, Michael Nava is a California attorney and author of a mystery series featuring Henry Rios, an openly gay criminal defense lawyer who struggles to maintain his faith in a sometimes corrupt legal system. Since Rios' debut in The Little Death in 1986, Nava's novels have received multiple Lambda Literary Awards for LGBT literature. Finally, there's Manuel Ramos, another attorney turned author. His mystery series has also won recognition and awards, including an Edgar nomination for The Ballad of Rocky Ruiz, the 1994 introduction of sleuth Luis Montez, a world-weary middle-aged lawyer and former Chicano activist. For more, see http://www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/triv204.html