What Were Once Vices…

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Notable Gay and Lesbian Eyes

Sam Spade seemed to take some genuine pleasure in belittling and slapping around both Wilmer (that gunsel!) and Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon, but homosexuals (and transsexuals) have already been treated more or less the same way in the genre for decades–and would continue to be so for decades to come. When they weren’t being reduced to campy comic relief, they were generally gender-confused homicidal freaks or pathetic perverts to be viewed with pity, if not outright contempt.

That all (finally!) started to change (thankgawd!) in the sixties, thanks to Lou Rand’s landmark The Gay Detective (1961), a campy but sympathetic treatment featuring “fierce but fey” private dick Francis Morley, and especially with the publication in 1970 of Joseph Hansen’s Fade Out, featuring a tough-minded, middle-aged insurance investigator, Dave Brandstetter, who just happened to be gay, and was about as camp as an actuarial spreadsheet.

Here, then, are a few of the more popular or significant gay, lesbian and transgender eyes…

Notable Gay Eyes

Notable Lesbian Eyes

Hand in hand with the success of women sleuths in general in the eighties came the rise of the lesbian eye. Who knew? While Kinsey, Sharon, V.I. et al were assaulting the mainstream bestseller lists, in alternative and women’s bookstores, readers first began snapping up lesbian novels featuring lesbian P.I.s by the armful.

Mostly printed by small, independent presses (Naiad, Seal, Crossing, Womansleuth, etc.), lesbian private eyes were suddenly everywhere. The books weren’t always great, and some seemed rather formulaic (by 1989, The Village Voice was snarking that “If it’s a Naiiad book, you can bet she’ll be in bed with some cute thing by, oh, page 120.”).

Still, there was no doubt that the dyke dick had arrived.

  • Kat Guerrera by M.F. Beal
    Generally considered the first lesbian eye (1977).
  • Helen Keremos by Eve Zaremba
    The first lesbian sleuth by a mainstream publisher (1978).
  • Lamaar Ransom by John Calder
    One of the first,  published in Britain, 1979
  • Lauren Laurano by Sandra Scoppettone
    The first lesbian eye by a mainstream publisher in hardcover (1991)
  • Helen Black by Pat Welch
  • Nell Fury by Elizabeth Pincus
  • Kylie Kendall by Clair McNab
  • Saz Martin by Stella Duffy
  • Robin Miller by Jaye Maiman
  • Eliza Pirex by Diana McRae
  • Caitlin Reece by Lauren Wright Douglas (1987)
  • Emma Victor by Mary Wings (1987)
  • Micky Knight by J.M. Redmann (1990)
    One of longest-running and acclaimed series to feature a private dyke.
  • Jill Fitzgerald by Dorothy Porter (1995)
  • Aud Torvingen by Nicola Griffith (1998)
  • Dex Parios by Greg Rucka & Matthew Southworth (2009)
    Not comic’s first private dyke, maybe, but certainly the best.
  • Kalinda Sharma by Michelle King & Richard King (The Good Wife) (2009)
    Leather-clad Archie Panjabi as Kalinda kicked ass on television for several glorious seasons, and then… pffft!
  • Butch Fatale by Christa Faust (2012)
    Sometimes girls just wanna have fun.
  • Honey Donohue by Ethan Coen & Tricia Cooke (Honey Don’t) (2025)

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.

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