Analysis of LGBTQ life before the Stonewall Riots of 1969 traditionally has been dominated by the powerful negative image of the closet, the metaphorical space where that which was deemed
queer
was necessarily sheltered from hostile, heteronormative public view. Literary studies of queer themes and characters in crime fiction have tended to focus on works published in the freer environment that has existed in the years since Stonewall, queer material, so the traditional belief runs, having been, for the most part, only negatively or obliquely presented in crime fiction of the closet-bound pre-Stonewall era. This book tempers this traditional view, offering readers a groundbreaking collection of twenty-three essays, in which the authors investigate queer aspects to crime fiction published over eight decades, from the corseted Victorian era to the unbuttoned Swinging Sixties, on the very eve of Stonewall.
Murder will out,
so the saying goes, and this is true as well of queer material in pre-Stonewall crime fiction, if one but follows the clues.