I am reading that book about Chang Apna, the real-life Charlie Chan. Hell of a man (preferred a bull whip to a gun). But he caught the public imagination in the 1930s because he was the first clever, good guy who was also a ‘Chinaman.’
This sets my mind awandering … **What ethnic groups are still represented by a fictional detective? **
A Gay detective in the 19-somethings might make an interesting character. Heck what about a murder mystery set in Saudi Arabia?
Did you really mean What ethnic groups are still UNrepresented by a fictional detective?
The mystery genre got very old and worn in the 80s and 90s. So to revive the genre, writers started putting detectives in places that hadn’t been done to death, pun deliberate.
I was in a bookstore yesterday that had a whole section on foreign detectives, of seemingly every possible nationality. I’m sure that can’t literally be true, but they came from all over the world. One of the hottest series going is the The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, set in Botswana and written by Alexander McCall Smith.
The first major gay detective series is usually attributed to George Baxt, a gay playwright/literary agent who turned to detective novels in the 1960s. He featured Pharoah Love, deliberately misspelled, who was a gay black New York City detective in the 1966 A Queer Kind of Death. The title is a giveaway but the words queer, gay, and homosexual are never actually applied to Love. Even so, the book is a gay camp romp with a sad undertone of reality because certain things literally can’t be spoken. Baxt wrote a couple of other books about Love, but the breakthrough mainstream gay detective was the Joseph Hansen series about Dave Brandstetter.
It’s hard to think about what could be left to write about. There is a series starring Oscar Wilde as a detective, by Gyles Brandreth, but he’s portrayed as he was in life, a closeted gay with a happy marriage, though his knowledge of the gay underground is extensive.
If you could find an unexploited niche, go for it. That’s the one road to publication that’s almost guaranteed to work if the book is any good at all.
Yes, I meant UNrepresented. You know a murder mystery set in Saudi Arabia could very well ‘work.’
Their should be a mystery book with a older rasifarian as the detective. Dreadlocks and all.
I like the historicals, myself: murder mysteries set in Ancient Rome, or medieval France, or in British-controlled Egypt, for instance. One of my new favorites is Barbara Hambly’s series beginning with A Free Man of Color, set in pre-Civil War New Orleans.
I’ve heard of one mystery series set in modern-day Saudia Arabia: Finding Nouf.
I know of at least one contemporary murder mystery series featuring a gay detective: The Brandstetterseries, by Joseph Hansen, begun in the 1970’s. I have the first book, but I haven’t read it yet.
There are some paranormal mysteries that are pretty good, like P.N. Elrod’s series featuring a vampire detective in 1920’s Chicago. I like Tanya Huff’s Canadian paranormal mysteries, too.
I looked at the preview at Amazon. Facinating.
Paul-are you familiar with this book? How relevant to living in Saudia Arabia is it? I realize it is a fiction book, but the first few pages were facinating.
I have never read Finding Nouf, but it is now on the list. I started writing a Saudi detective the other day. Impossible from first-person, I cannot get inside his head. I like the guy though.