I was going to quietly ignore this opinion piece from the Independent on the grounds that I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record on the topic and that the handful of people who read the poor old sinking Indy had probably skimmed over it. But the more I thought about it, the more irritated I got by the smugness and inaccuracy of the piece.
My first action was to check the date on the piece – it read like something from the 1980s and early 1990s when publishers such as Women's Press were publishing lesbian crime fiction regularly. That was when I found Val McDermid's wonderful Lindsay Gordon series and was instantly re-energised by the genre. Manda Scott, the author of the article, and Stella Duffy, who's also mentioned, were among some of those early pioneers.
Since those heady days 20 years ago, though, lesbian crime writing is in the doldrums. Those three names mentioned above are happily still writing, but they're sure as hell not turning out lesbian crime fic. Good grief, heavens to Betsy, I'm all for writers writing what they want, and trying different challenges. And I'd be a bit damn worried if McDermid was still fixated on Greenham Common. But I find it intriguing that McDermid and Scott only become big names when they moved to large publishers and started writing 'straight.'
I'm a huge fan of McDermid, who has
never made any secret of her sexuality, is a trenchant supporter of the genre
and almost always has GLBT characters in her supporting cast (as does Nastasha
Cooper in her Trish Maguire series). But then it's not unusual to pick up a
crime novel now from straight writers and find the same thing. And that's how
it should be. I'm sure now most publishers – certainly in the UK – don't give a
damn about the sexual preferences of their writers (look at how successful
Sarah Waters is). But I bet they do twitch
if confronted with a book with a gay or lesbian central character (unless
they're one of the ever-shrinking GLBT publishers or a self-publishing set-up
which depends on the writer getting their chequebook out – and a fair few gay
writers have gone down that road, sadly).
I went and browsed the reviews on RTE to see which lesbian crime fic we've reviewed lately – and it's all American and from small publishers such as Alyson (who, I believe, have been bought out). The two most recent I could find in the UK were from a bloke – Ed O'Connor's Primal Cut (2007) – and Tracey Shellito's Personal Protection from my blog mate Lynne Patrick's Crème de la Crime in 2005. O'Connor's book was published by Allison & Busby, another smallish indie publisher.
Duffy's last adventure for London PI Saz Martin was in Mouths of Babes in 2005. Hostage to Murder the last outing for Lindsay Gordon way back in 2003 – and published under the name VL McDermid. Scott's Stronger Than Death, featuring lesbian vet Kellen Stewart, dates even further back to 1999.
There's a world of difference between lesbian writers and lesbian writing. Scott is talking about the former. And it doesn't alter the fact that lesbian crime writing is in a parlous state. Kudos to Scott and Co for coming out publicly, but don't pretend you're at the cutting edge of lesbian crime writing, because you're not.
Agree totally, Sharon. And, thinking about the massive amount of translated (mainly Scandinavian) crime fiction I am reading these days/years, same applies. Sometimes we don't know the orientation of the protags/detectives in books from anywhere, but more often we do and most if not always it is hetero. I think celibacy is more popular than lesbian, in fact ;-) (based on my own reading anyway).
Posted by: Maxine | August 20, 2009 at 07:22 AM
Hi Maxine! I'm glad it's not just me! I did think at one point one of the Swedish writers had had a lesbian main character, but when I double-checked, it was the victim!
Some writers do seem to gloss over it. Victoria Blake's PI main character always feels like she should be a lesbian, but she has a far too convenient ex-boyfriend around!
Posted by: Lartonmedia | August 20, 2009 at 12:14 PM