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Lesbian Mystery Roundup: May 2010

Lesbian Mystery Roundup: May 2010

Author: Victoria Brownworth

June 2, 2010

With summer just around the corner, we need beach reading. Since I was a child, beach reading has meant mysteries. When I was eight it was Nancy Drew and the Bobbsey Twins. Soon after I discovered Agatha Christie, Mary Renault and Mary Roberts Rhinehart. Then I dallied with Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett—who wouldn’t?—and even gave my heart ever-so-briefly to Mickey Spillane (although I think it was his “tomatoes” I truly loved).

As an adult, however, it’s been difficult for me to tear myself away from mysteries written by women. I have long worshiped at the altar of P.D. James and Ruth Rendell and am driven to search for the latest Sue Grafton or Laura Lippman. I have spent many an evening with the likes of Ellen Hart, Katherine Forrest, Val McDermid, Nicola Griffith and J.M. Redmann.

I love a good mystery. And if the rate at which LGBT presses are churning out mysteries is any indicator, many share my love of a good mystery. Fortunately for us aficionados of the wide range of mysteries—from cozy parlor to the darker, edgier thriller—a passel of good tales awaits.

Click to read the review

THE MIRROR AND THE MASK
By Ellen Hart
Minotaur Books
ISBN: 9780312375270
Hardcover, $25.99, 320p
Lambda Award Finalist
[Read the review]

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DEATH OF A DYING MAN
By J.M. Redmann
Bold Strokes Books
ISBN: 9781602820753
Paperback, $16.95, 228 p.
Lambda Award Winner
[Read the review]

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COMMAND OF SILENCE
By Paulette Callen
Spinster’s Ink
ISBN: 9781602820753
Paperback, $14.95, 288 p.
Lambda Award Finalist
[Read the review]

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MISSING LYNX
By Kim Baldwin & Xenia Alexiou
Bold Strokes Books
ISBN: 9781602821378
Paperback, $16.95, 312 p.
[Read the review]

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OF COURSE IT’S MURDER
By Kate Sweeney
Intaglio
ISBN: 9781935216117
Paperback, $16.95, 220 p.
[Read the review]
Victoria Brownworth photo

About: Victoria Brownworth

Victoria A. Brownworth is an award-winning journalist, editor and writer and the author and editor of nearly 30 books. She has won the NLGJA and the Society of Professional Journalists awards, the Lambda Literary Award and has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She won the 2013 SPJ Award for Enterprise Reporting in May 2014. She is a regular contributor to The Advocate and SheWired, a blogger for Huffington Post and A Room of Her Own, a columnist and contributing editor for Curve magazine and Lambda Literary Review and a columnist for San Francisco Bay Area Reporter. Her reporting and commentary have appeared in the New York Times, Village Voice, Baltimore Sun, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, The Nation, Ms Magazine and Slate. Her book, 'From Where We Sit: Black Writers Write Black Youth' won the 2012 Moonbeam Award for cultural & historical fiction. Her new novel, 'Ordinary Mayhem,' won the IPPY Award for fiction on May 1, 2015. Her book 'Erasure: Silencing Lesbians' and her next novel, 'Sleep So Deep,' will both be published in 2016. @VABVOX

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