Created by J.M. Redmann
Pseudonym of Jean Redmann
Other pseudonyms include R. Jean Reid
(1955–)
One of the toughest (and most popular) female eyes of the nineties was J.M. Redmann’s MICHELE “MICKY” KNIGHT, a gay New Orleans private eye.
Micky has taken more than one on the chin over this long-running series, and she’s not afraid of dishing it out, even as she becomes less and less enchanted by the Big Easy.
Morebutch than fem, this one hard-boiled dyke, according to Jean Swanson and Dean James in By a Woman’s Hand (1996), a who’s-who of (then) contemporary women writers of crime and mystery fiction.
“I really like the character, though I don’t always like what she does,” confesses reader Karen Mix. “I’m glad I got to read them in order as you can see how much Micky grows. Although the subjects can be heavy, drugs, clinic bombings, and child abuse, there is still a lot of (very dry) humor. V.I. Warshawski, for example, would be easier to spend time with if she had a sense of humor.”
Micky’s appeared in several more slam-bang adventures since then, making her one of the longest-running series to follow a lesbian eye, and they’re all liberally laced with offbeat characters and some heavy doses of sex and violence.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
R.M. Redmann is a a gay rights activist and novelist, best known for her long-running and acclaimed series featuring private eye Micky Knight. Three of them, The Intersection of Law and Desire (1995), Death of a Dying Man(2009) and Ill Will (2013), have won Lambda Literary Awards, and several of the others have been short-listed, while Transitory (2023) won the prestigious Joseph Hansen Award for LGBTQ+ Crime Writing. The series has been translated into Spanish, German, Dutch, Norwegian, and Hebrew, and she’s the co-editor with Greg Herren of three queer-themed anthologies: Night Shadows: Queer Horror, Women of the Mean Streets: Lesbian Noir, and Men of the Mean Streets: Gay Noir. She lives in an historic neighborhood in New Orleans with her partner and several cats.
NOVELS
- Death by the Riverside (1990) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Deaths of Jocasta (1992) |Buy this book | Kindle it!
- The Intersection of Law and Desire (1995) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Lost Daughters (1999) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Death of a Dying Man (2009) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Water Mark (2010) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Ill Will (2012) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- The Shoal of Time (2013) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- The Girl on the Edge of Summer (2017) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Not Dead Enough (2019) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Transitory (2023) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- The Smallest Day (2025) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- What Were Once Vices…
Notable Gay and Lesbian Eyes - The Lesbian Private Eye
Megan Casey takes a peek at the history of the Sapphic Sleuth.
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Thanks to Karen Mix for her help with this one.
