Private investigations: Writer tracks The Gay Male sleuth

by Mike Crawmer

For many fans of gay fiction, there’s nothing more satisfying then cozying up with a good mystery, especially if it features a handsome, resourceful, intriguing sleuth.

One such sleuth is Dr. Simon Kirby-Jones, the protagonist in a mystery series set in Snupperton-Mumsley, a quintessentially quaint English village.

Kirby-Jones, the creation of writer Dean James, supports himself by pumping out mysteries at a truly fantastical rate. But that’s not the only superhuman quirk of delightfully sketched Kirby-Jones: he’s also a vampire, who no longer needs to drink human blood to get through the night, or day.

If, on the other hand, you prefer a mystery more grounded in reality, there’s California lawyer Henry Rios, the creation of Michael Nava, who starred in a series of seven novels published from 1986 to 2001. Or, for something more up to date, and decidedly darker, there’s always self-destructive investigative reporter Benjamin Justice, introduced by author John Morgan Wilson in 1996 in the gritty Simple Justice.

What? Never heard of Ben Justice? Or Kirby-Jones? What about Jas Anderson of Glasgow? Or the campy Alex Reynolds? Surely, you remember Dave Brandstetter, the sleuth in 14 mysteries published in the ’70s and ’80s? What about PI Dick Hardesty, who once said, “As a 100-percent gay man, I tend to get extremely defensive when other gay men end up dead for whatever reason”?

Not familiar with these fascinating fellows and their cohort of defenders of truth and justice? Well, not to fear: Author Drewey Wayne Gunn introduces you to each and every one of them—several hundred, as a matter of fact—in his comprehensive, detailed and eye-opening book, The Gay Male Sleuth in Print and Film.

Gunn’s book, the result of decades of dedicated reading of gay fiction, shines a critical but loving light on a unique world, one populated by rogues and lovers, the closeted and the out, the brave and the fearful, the living and the dead. In other words, a world very much like the one we wake up to every day.

The genesis for GMS began while Gunn was staying with his terminally ill mother in North Carolina. He’d retired from teaching at a Texas university and, with empty hours to fill, Gunn decided to catch up on years of reading detours. His tastes ran toward mysteries, especially those featuring gay males as the lead protagonist. Eventually, he closed the covers on a hundred or so novels, realizing he had developed a storehouse of knowledge and insight that he wanted to share with others.

Gunn found a number of themes running through this subgenre of a genre (mysteries, like romances, are considered “genre” writing, a type of fiction that does not aspire to high lit but more to entertainment, with enlightenment the occasional fortunate happenstance). He also discovered a cast of characters that he brings to life within the pages of GMS, in both synopses and a lengthy, readable discourse on the history of the gay sleuth.

That history is a fascinating one, beginning—as best Gunn could discover—in 1952 England with the gay psychiatrist Tony Page. English authors laid the groundwork for this genre, which eventually grew solid roots in America, flourishing in the ’70s and ’80s with such seminal series as Joseph Hansen’s David Brandstetter and continuing to this day with new gay sleuths hitting the nation’s bookshelves every month. (Within months of turning over GMS to his publisher, Gunn compiled a list of 15 new works of gay detective fiction, proof that fictional gay sleuths continue to have legs.)

The fact that you can go into many major bookstores today and browse through several shelves of gay mysteries, or, in some cities, find an even bigger selection in gay and lesbian bookstores, illustrates just how “mainstream” the gay sleuth has become. Gunn’s GMS can be considered the icing on the cake of the subgenre recognition as a legitimate publishing phenomenon.

Just how big is this mini-industry? Gunn’s research indicates that, while not large by publishing standards, the presentation of gay sleuths in print and film is not inconsequential. In GMS he lists more than 400 novels, short stories, plays and comic albums with gay sleuths or undercover agents, some 40 films and television series, and more than 30 erotic videos, plus about 165 works of fiction, and over 55 films, videos and television series that do not fit his strict criteria but are “of interest,” as he writes.

(Respect for his readers’ intelligence permeates GMS. For instance, Gunn points out in Chapter 1 that he doesn’t reveal the endings to any of the stories and, in fact, he writes, “Six times… I have even played along with an author’s misleading game.”)

Gunn’s review of the history of the gay male sleuth follows major political and societal developments of the last five decades. He organizes this discussion in easily digestible chapters: for instance, Pre-Stonewall Pioneers (1953-1969), Trailblazers in a Hedonistic Decade (1970-1980) and Pathfinders During a Dark Time (1981-1994).

Organizing the history in this way allows Gunn to delve into an array of issues and topics, from the impact positive images of gays had on gay readers in the ’50s and ’60s to the ways authors dealt with the AIDS crisis in the ’80s.

As revealing and insightful as GMS is, perhaps the most eye-opening parts of Gunn’s history deal with the pulps. Pulps came into being in the late 1950s and early ’60s. Published by small presses, these paperback originals were usually pornographic and covered every taste in men’s genre fiction, from gay Westerns to gay detective stories. It is the latter that Gunn focuses on in GMS.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve read more pulp mysteries than anyone alive,” Gunn said in a telephone interview from his home in Texas. The times and his location—’60s small-town Texas—meant that Gunn had little in the way of a “gay” life. Access to gay pulps, usually available at local convenience stores when they were a major outlet for paperbacks, opened up another world to Gunn.

Pulps thrived as long as they were the only game in town, so to speak. Their end came about with gradual inevitability when the gay porn industry switched to videotape and video recorders became commonplace in American homes. Soon reading about porn was replaced with watching it in the privacy of one’s home, and pulps faded from the scene.

Still, they played an important role in the development of the current gay detective genre, and in Gunn’s own life.

“The pulps were liberating for me,” he said. “All other books at that time were of gay misery, but I never felt unhappy about being gay. In pulps, I found gay men who loved being gay.”

Still, when it came to compiling his history of the gay mystery, Gunn found himself putting pulps where so many others had, outside the mainstream. He eventually saw the light.

“At first I separated the pulps into a separate section, but as I re-read more of them, I became uneasy with that. I realized how much I was seeing the same themes in early pulps as in regular mysteries,” Gunn said.

People unfamiliar with the genre might be surprised to learn that among the themes that run through many, if not most, gay mysteries are those of love and acceptance.

“So much of what the gay sleuth does is searching out the mystery of what goes through our lives,” Gunn said. “In gay male sleuths books, I was intrigued to find how many of these guys are looking for love.”

Gunn points out in his book that coming-out stories formed the genesis of many gay murder mysteries, and continue to do so even today.

“It’s interesting how many novels begin with the sleuth coming out or being forced out of the closet,” Gunn observed. One novel that didn’t make it into his book because it was released just this year deals with a gay Honolulu policeman who is forced out of the closet by a murder.

The gay male sleuths in Gunn’s compendium are a diverse lot, and Gunn likes most of them, as becomes obvious while reading Gay Male Sleuth.

“I used to think that it was usual for older sleuths to fall in love with younger men, but when I did a hard count, I found that it’s really all over the board,” Gunn said. What’s missing from the genre is almost as interesting as what’s present.

“I made a list one time of what hadn’t been done,” Gunn said. “I didn’t find any canine mysteries, and only one with a cat. For some reason, very few gay sleuths own pets.

“There are no father and son teams, and I couldn’t find one female-becomes-male gay sleuth. There are very few handicapped people in gay books and not a lot of old people. It’s dangerous to have an old sleuth, especially in a series,” Gunn observed, where the sleuth is expected to live for many years.

As for himself, Gunn hopes the sales of Gay Male Sleuth will be big enough that his publisher will issue a new, expanded version of the book in seven years. In the meantime, Gunn will continue to add to his unique collection of books featuring gay male detectives. That certainly should make Duke University happy: Gunn has willed his entire collection—now numbering some 1,000 books—to the school.