|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
Gay and lesbian crime fiction provided an ever so slightly flagging genre with a timely shot in the arm in the 1980s. Twenty years on, bookshelves are groaning under the weight of the number of books in this category And it feels like Judith A Markowitz has read every single one of them! THE GAY DETECTIVE NOVEL goes some way to filling the gap in the academic market following cursory mentions in a number of general texts, and Sally Munt's unsatisfactory MURDER BY THE BOOK. Markowitz has carried out a formidable amount of research and provides the reader with an astonishing range of material of gay and lesbian detective fiction. She sketches in some general background on the crime genre, before providing specific examples from her field, along with some recurring themes. The book is divided into three sections -- the gay and lesbian crime fiction scene, the authors and their characters, and themes across the series (in the form of lists of the relevant books under alphabetical themes). But it does end rather abruptly with no conclusion, and the summaries of sub-genres is a bit brisk. The meat of the book, though, which is where the book will more than pay its way, is information about every writer Markowitz has found, including brief biographical details, date of birth and dates of the books -- and, most usefully of all for scholars, extracts of interviews with a large number of the authors. Given how useful this section is, I might have been inclined in turn the book into an alphabetical guide and forget the rather sketchy context earlier on. It sits most comfortably as a reference guide, given there is really no attempt at analysing or discussing the texts. Markowitz is an efficient writer, but she could have done without the constant ponderous repetition of writers' real names and their pen names. It would have been less intrusive to have mentioned those real names in the biographical section and stuck to the writing names elsewhere. And there are one or two wobbles when she attempts to translate English slang (an anglepoise is a lamp, not a telephone!) But THE GAY DETECTIVE is a welcome text and has also given me plenty of writers to go rooting out. And it provides snippets of intriguing information -- I never knew that Samuel Steward, creator of the Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas series, was porn writer Phil Andros's real name!
Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, December 2004
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
| 
