Death of a Busybody - Dell Shannon - 3* with a caveat

[Robin P]

It regularly happens that I read a book that has no connection to the monthly tag, only to find that it surprisingly does. In this case, not in a good way. This is one of a series of over 20 mystery/police procedurals written by Dell Shannon ( a pseudonym probably so people wouldn't know the author was a woman).

The book, written in 1960, is way ahead of its time in making the main detective a Mexican-American in Los Angeles at a time when the police force was overwhelmingly white, and so was a lot of the city. it is remarked on when Black and Latina nurses are found in a hospital in a certain neighborhood. And the detective, Lt. Mendoza, gets plenty of racist looks and remarks. He also sprinkles his speech with a lot of Spanish phrases. In other signs of the times, men are wearing hats, everyone is smoking, including in the police station, hospital, and private homes, people are drinking hard liquor, and the detective thinks nothing of threatening and roughing up not only suspects, but witnesses, insisting they can't call a lawyer until after they talk. (I just looked it up and the Miranda decision telling suspects their rights didn't come out until 1966. )

As far as this month's tag, the main suspect and his friend are found to be gay. But that word is never used, they are called "fag", "queer", and "those people", "people like that". They are assumed to be overemotional and deceptive. They are also presented as a bit ridiculous. It is supposed to be a brilliant insight of the detective that you can't always tell who is homosexual just by looking at them or talking to them. The 2 men are suspect because it would be a scandal if the truth about them came out, and the murder victim could have exposed them. They are pretty much forced to be interviewed by the police because otherwise they could be arrested and imprisoned on "morals" charges.

Apparently, Lt. Mendoza was quite a womanizer in the first few books, but in the one before this, he met a fiery redhead who he married, and they are quite passionately happy. He is also a huge cat lover, and cats play a part in the story. Although I don't remember ever seeing this author or series before, apparently it was very popular and an early example of police procedurals.

So the link to LGBT shows how far we have (hopefully) come in 60 years. Mystery/thriller lovers, do you know of series where the professional investigator is gay? There is the Kate Martinelli series by Laurie R. King, but does anyone know of a gay male cop/detective?

There is another very different mystery called Death of a Busybody set in an English village and published in 1942.