Akiva Reads

by Katherine V. Forrest

I got this at the Baltimore Free Library. Their LGBT fiction (which is mostly of 1970s-1990s vintage) is split about evenly between gay male romance novels and lesbian detective novels. That phenomenon was much more interesting to me than Murder By Tradition turned out to be.

Murder By Tradition sounds like it should involve secret societies and arcane rituals, but it's actually a very mundane Law and Order episode, set in the 1980s, with a lesbian detective and an out gay murder victim. Extremely forgettable, except the part where it's depressing to what extent an innocent or guilty verdict comes down to nothing more than whose lawyer has better sneaky lawyer tricks.

The main drama comes when the defense lawyer (who turns out to be evil and bungling for no reason beyond author laziness) threatens to out Detective Kate. What'll she do?? Afterward, Kate tells her girlfriend (who is not much more than a cardboard cutout, with an obligatory awkward mid-book sex scene), the badass feminist prosecutor, and her other vaguely characterized lesbian friends she would have refused to answer the question if he'd asked it. This is portrayed as an inspiring stand for gay rights, which does more than any of the frizzy hairstyles to date this novel.