15 Best Sapphic Mystery and Detective Books to Investigate
Lesbian detectives, private investigators, amateur sleuths, murder mysteries and women who really should stop asking questions
I love a woman who asks too many questions.
Give her a suspicious death, a missing woman, several people who are very obviously lying to her and absolutely no intention of leaving well enough alone, and I'm in.
Perhaps that's the crime writer in me.
I've always loved mysteries, particularly the kind where solving the crime means getting underneath people's carefully constructed versions of themselves. Everyone has secrets. Everyone has a reason they don't want the detective looking too closely. And somewhere among all those half-truths is the one thing somebody was willing to kill to keep hidden.
Add lesbian, bisexual and sapphic women to the investigation and you've got an entire corner of crime fiction I think deserves considerably more attention.
Because sapphic mystery books aren't one particular kind of story.
Sometimes we're following a professional detective or private investigator. Sometimes it's an amateur sleuth who becomes involved in something she really should have walked away from. There are missing women, cold cases, secret societies, historical mysteries, police procedurals and murders where practically everyone has a motive.
Some are dark.
Some are funny.
Some have romance running alongside the investigation.
And some are far more interested in the dead body than whether anybody gets kissed.
I'm perfectly happy with both.
So, if you're looking for lesbian mystery books, sapphic detectives and women who simply cannot resist pulling at one more thread, these are the books I'd put on your list.
Why Sapphic Mystery Books Are So Addictive
A good mystery makes a promise to the reader very early on.
Something happened.
You don't know what.
But if you pay attention, perhaps you can work it out.
That's part of the pleasure. You're not simply watching a character solve a crime. You're investigating alongside her.
Who is lying?
Which apparently insignificant detail matters?
Why did she say that?
And why do I suddenly not trust the perfectly pleasant woman who appeared on page thirty-seven?
The best mysteries make everybody look suspicious eventually.
But sapphic mystery and detective books can bring another layer to those stories because the women investigating the crime aren't always moving through the world in quite the same way as the traditional male detective.
Older lesbian crime fiction, in particular, could explore communities and relationships that mainstream crime novels often ignored. A lesbian detective might understand why somebody concealed a relationship, why a witness was frightened of the police or why the official version of someone's life didn't quite match the private one.
Modern sapphic mysteries have considerably more freedom, but that history still makes the genre fascinating.
And then there are the characters themselves.
Complicated female detectives are wonderful.
Let her be brilliant at spotting inconsistencies and absolutely hopeless at recognising the disaster unfolding in her own personal life.
Let her solve a murder while ignoring seventeen increasingly concerned messages from the woman she's sleeping with.
Let her know precisely when a suspect is lying while remaining completely incapable of admitting that she has feelings.
That's the sort of detective I can get behind.
What Counts as a Sapphic Mystery or Detective Book?
For this list, I'm using the term fairly broadly.
A sapphic mystery book doesn't necessarily need to be a lesbian romance with a murder inconveniently dropped into the middle.
The mystery can be the main event.
What I'm looking for is crime and mystery fiction in which lesbian, bisexual or sapphic women have a meaningful place in the story. That might mean the detective herself is sapphic, the central amateur investigator is, or sapphic identity and relationships are important to the mystery being uncovered.
That distinction matters because mystery readers and romance readers arrive with different expectations.
Pick up a romance and you generally expect the relationship to provide the central emotional journey.
Pick up a detective novel and somebody had better start investigating something.
Preferably fairly soon.
The books on this list range from traditional detective fiction and private-investigator stories to YA mysteries, noir, murder mysteries and darker psychological crime.
Some have substantial romantic elements.
Others don't.
What connects them is the mystery and the sapphic women caught up in solving it.
Lesbian Detectives, Private Investigators and Amateur Sleuths
I have a particular fondness for the private investigator.
There's something inherently appealing about a woman who makes her living walking into situations where everybody would really rather she went away.
She doesn't have to follow quite the same rules as the police.
She's frequently working with incomplete information.
People lie to her constantly.
And there's usually a point where someone tells her to stop investigating, which naturally means she's going to investigate twice as hard.
But lesbian detective novels have given us far more than PIs.
Katherine V. Forrest's Kate Delafield novels put a lesbian police detective at the centre of a long-running crime series. More recent books have expanded the possibilities further, giving us bisexual investigators, teenage amateur sleuths, reluctant detectives and ordinary women pulled into extraordinary crimes.
And I like that variety.
I don't need every sapphic detective to be fearless.
I don't need her to be likeable all the time either.
Give me messy.
Give me stubborn.
Give me the woman who knows going through that door alone is a terrible idea and opens it anyway.
Most importantly, give her a mystery worth solving.
Because that's where we're going next.
15 Best Sapphic Mystery and Detective Books
And I'm starting with a private investigator who is complicated, grieving, bisexual and very good at noticing when something about a case doesn't add up:
1. The Last Place You Look by Kristen Lepionka
If you like your private investigators complicated, stubborn and carrying around almost as much emotional baggage as the people they're investigating, Roxane Weary is an excellent place to start.
Roxane is a private investigator in Columbus, Ohio, and when we meet her, she's grieving the death of her police-officer father and drinking rather more than is advisable. Then she takes on a case involving Brad Stockton, a man sitting on death row for murdering his girlfriend's parents. He has always maintained his innocence, but with his execution approaching, there isn't much time left to prove it.
The possibility that could change everything is Sarah Cook, Stockton's girlfriend, who disappeared on the night of the murders and was presumed dead.
Then somebody thinks they've seen her.
What follows is exactly the sort of mystery I enjoy: missing women, old evidence, uncomfortable questions and an investigator who keeps digging even when other people would very much prefer that she didn't.
Roxane is bisexual, and her personal relationships aren't tucked neatly away from the investigation. She's messy and flawed, which makes her feel far more interesting than a detective who miraculously has every part of her life under control.
It's also the beginning of the Roxane Weary series, so if she gets her hooks into you, there are more cases waiting.
Perfect for readers who love: bisexual private investigators, cold cases, missing women, flawed female detectives, murder investigations and hard-boiled crime fiction.
2. The Verifiers by Jane Pek
Claudia Lin has found what might be one of the strangest jobs in detective fiction.
She works for Veracity, a dating detective agency.
Its clients aren't asking Claudia to find missing people or catch murderers. They want to know whether the people they've met online are actually who they claim to be. Claudia and her colleagues discreetly investigate potential partners, looking for lies, hidden relationships and anything else somebody might have conveniently left off their dating profile.
Which, frankly, already sounds like fertile ground for trouble.
Then one of their clients dies.
What begins in the world of online dating develops into something much bigger, forcing Claudia to investigate what really happened while confronting questions about identity, technology and how much we can ever truly know about another person.
Claudia is a lesbian, a mystery-book obsessive and a wonderfully unconventional amateur detective. Her Chinese-American family also plays a substantial role in the story, particularly the expectations Claudia is navigating while keeping parts of her life carefully separated.
This is a good choice if you want your sapphic mystery books contemporary and clever rather than relentlessly dark. There's humour here alongside the mystery, but there's also plenty going on beneath the surface.
Perfect for readers who love: lesbian amateur sleuths, dating mysteries, technology, family dynamics, clever investigations and contemporary crime fiction.
3. Blackmail, My Love by Katie Gilmartin
Now we're heading back to San Francisco in 1951.
And this one gives us something very different. It also won Lambda Award 2015 for Best Gay Mystery!
Josie O'Conner arrives in the city looking for her brother, a private investigator who has disappeared. Her search draws her into a blackmail operation targeting gay men and lesbians at a time when simply being exposed could destroy someone's career, relationships and entire life.
That historical setting makes the mystery particularly powerful because secrecy isn't merely a convenient plot device.
It's survival.
Josie moves through bars, clubs and hidden communities as she searches for answers, and the investigation becomes intertwined with the lives of people forced to exist beyond the respectable version of San Francisco presented to the outside world.
The novel is also illustrated, with Gilmartin's artwork helping create its distinctive noir atmosphere.
For readers interested in the history behind lesbian crime fiction, Blackmail, My Love is particularly worth discovering. The danger comes not only from finding the person responsible, but from the institutions and social attitudes that allowed blackmail to become such a devastating weapon in the first place.
Perfect for readers who love: historical lesbian mysteries, 1950s San Francisco, queer history, noir, missing-person investigations and atmospheric crime fiction.
4. There Can Only Be Six by Andrea Levesque
Secret societies are rarely good news.
They're excellent news for mystery readers, obviously, but if somebody invites you to join one in real life, I'd perhaps ask a few more questions first.
In There Can Only Be Six, Andrea Levesque takes us into YA mystery territory, combining teenage sleuthing with secrets, suspicion and sapphic representation.
There's something particularly enjoyable about an amateur investigator who doesn't have a badge, years of police training or an office with PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR written on the door. She has curiosity, instinct and the growing certainty that something isn't right.
And once that happens, leaving the mystery alone isn't really an option.
This is one for readers who enjoy the puzzle and conspiracy side of sapphic mystery books, particularly stories involving exclusive groups where everyone seems to know considerably more than they're willing to say.
Perfect for readers who love: sapphic YA mysteries, secret societies, teenage sleuths, conspiracies, hidden motives and twisty investigations.
5. Two Sides to Every Murder by Danielle Valentine
There are places sensible people would simply never return to.
A summer camp where an infamous triple murder took place would be quite high on my list.
Naturally, Olivia and Reagan go back.
Seventeen years earlier, Camp Lost Lake became the scene of a notorious murder case. Olivia was actually born during the murders, and years later she discovers that the man she has always believed to be her father isn't her biological parent. If she wants answers about where she came from, Camp Lost Lake is the obvious place to start looking.
Reagan has a very different connection to the same night. Her mother was accused of the killings, and Reagan has spent much of her life on the run with a woman she believes was wrongly blamed.
When the camp finally reopens, both girls return looking for the truth.
Unfortunately, somebody would quite like the truth to remain buried.
This sits towards the thriller end of our sapphic mystery books list, with two perspectives, an old crime, family secrets and the rather unsettling realisation that what you've been told about your own past might not be true.
Perfect for readers who love: sapphic YA mysteries, summer-camp murders, cold cases, dual perspectives, family secrets and final-girl stories.
6. The Last Girls Standing by Jennifer Dugan
Sloan and Cherry survive a massacre at the summer camp where they're working.
Everyone else is dead.
Months later, the two girls are inseparable. They've survived something almost nobody else could understand, and that shared trauma has pulled them into an intense relationship.
But surviving the murders doesn't mean the mystery is over.
As Sloan begins uncovering new information about what happened that night, questions emerge about the ritual killings and the people responsible. And gradually she starts wondering something considerably more frightening than whether the killers could come back.
What if Cherry knows more than she's saying?
Worse, what if her girlfriend wasn't simply another victim?
That's a deliciously horrible premise because the mystery sits directly inside the romance. Sloan isn't investigating a suspicious stranger. She's questioning the person she trusts most, while simultaneously wondering whether trauma is distorting her judgement.
Jennifer Dugan describes it as a queer YA psychological thriller, and it brings slasher horror into the mystery beautifully.
Perfect for readers who love: sapphic psychological thrillers, girlfriends with secrets, summer-camp horror, final girls, unreliable perceptions and dark YA mysteries.
7. How to Find a Missing Girl by Victoria Wlosok
Now this is unapologetically sapphic detective fiction.
There's even a sapphic detective agency.
Iris Blackthorn's older sister, Stella, disappeared a year ago. Iris tried to investigate, but instead of finding her sister, she managed to interfere with the police investigation badly enough that she's been warned to stop meddling.
Then another girl disappears.
This time it's Heather, Iris's ex-girlfriend, who vanishes after releasing an episode of her true-crime podcast about Stella's disappearance.
Iris is absolutely not leaving this one to the adults.
Together with her amateur sleuthing agency, she starts investigating both disappearances, all while a suspicious detective watches what she's doing and the clock ticks towards her eighteenth birthday.
Iris is pansexual, while her investigative team includes lesbian hacker Sammy Valdez-Taylor and non-binary Imani Turner. There are also complicated romantic feelings simmering alongside the missing-person investigation.
If someone landed on this article specifically searching for sapphic detective books, this would be one of the easiest recommendations to make. It doesn't merely happen to have a sapphic character somewhere in the story. Sapphic teenagers are actually doing the detecting.
Perfect for readers who love: sapphic detective agencies, missing-girl mysteries, amateur sleuths, true-crime podcasts, lesbian and pansexual characters and YA crime fiction.
8. Gallows Humor by Carolyn Elizabeth
There is something wonderfully inconvenient about noticing that a supposedly straightforward death isn't straightforward at all.
Corey Curtis works at Jackson City Memorial Hospital and, at thirty-three, thinks life is going reasonably well. She has good friends, a satisfying career and occasional relationships with women.
Then Dr Thayer Reynolds arrives.
Thayer is preparing to begin an Emergency Department fellowship and has already heard enough about Corey to become curious. Their attraction provides the romantic thread, but Corey soon has something rather less enjoyable demanding her attention.
A construction worker has fallen to his death.
Nothing suspicious there.
Until there is.
Corey begins investigating despite receiving little support from either her boss or the police, and what starts as suspicion becomes considerably more dangerous as she keeps pushing for answers. Her tendency to make questionable decisions for perfectly understandable reasons eventually puts both herself and Thayer at risk.
This is a particularly good choice if you want lesbian mystery books with romance rather than a crime novel where the sapphic relationship remains somewhere in the background.
A suspicious death and inconvenient attraction?
Much more my sort of workplace drama.
Perfect for readers who love: lesbian amateur sleuths, medical mysteries, suspicious deaths, sapphic romance, women investigating when the police won't and danger mixed with attraction.
9. Justice in the Shadows by Radclyffe
Sometimes I want my mystery wrapped around a proper lesbian romance.
Radclyffe is particularly good territory for that.
Justice in the Shadows is part of the Justice series, where crime, investigation and relationships are closely intertwined. This isn't the sort of book where the lesbian characters happen to exist somewhere around the edges while somebody else gets to solve everything. Women are firmly at the centre of the danger, the investigation and the emotional story.
It's also a good example of why I've included romantic suspense alongside more traditional mysteries on this list. Sometimes the relationship develops because the characters are working under pressure, making difficult decisions and discovering very quickly whether they can actually trust each other.
And nothing accelerates getting to know someone quite like people trying to kill you.
If you enjoy lesbian detective books where the investigation and romance receive substantial page time, Radclyffe is an author worth exploring beyond this single title.
Perfect for readers who love: lesbian romantic suspense, crime investigations, law enforcement heroines, danger, established series and romance alongside the mystery.
10. Devil's Rock by Gerri Hill
Gerri Hill is another author who knows how to put two women together, give them something dangerous to investigate and then make attraction considerably more inconvenient.
Devil's Rock sits in that lovely space between lesbian mystery, romantic suspense and crime fiction, so it's a particularly good choice if you want more relationship development than you'd normally find in a straightforward police procedural. The book won a Goldie in Lesbian Mystery, and Hill has written extensively across lesbian mystery, romance and romantic intrigue.
What I enjoy about this kind of story is that the mystery gives the relationship something to push against.
Attraction is one thing when you're sitting across from somebody over dinner.
It's quite another when you're trying to work out who can be trusted and whether either of you is actually safe.
Hill has a substantial back catalogue for readers who discover they like their sapphic romance with crime attached, so Devil's Rock can also be a gateway into considerably more lesbian mystery and suspense.
Which is always dangerous for the TBR.
Perfect for readers who love: lesbian mystery, romantic suspense, dangerous investigations, sapphic chemistry, women in peril and crime mixed with romance.
11. The Kate Delafield Series by Katherine V. Forrest
If we're talking about lesbian detectives, we really can't do this list without Kate Delafield.
The series began with Amateur City in 1984, introducing Kate as an LAPD homicide detective investigating the murder of a corporate executive. Forrest's decision to put a lesbian police detective at the centre of a procedural was significant: Kate Delafield is widely recognised as a pioneering figure in lesbian crime fiction.
And this isn't a one-book recommendation.
Kate went on investigating.
Murder at the Nightwood Bar takes her into a case involving the murder of a nineteen-year-old whose body is discovered outside a lesbian bar. Later books continue to combine homicide investigations with Kate's experiences as a lesbian working within the LAPD.
That's what makes the series particularly interesting now.
You can enjoy the individual mysteries, but you're also reading part of the history of lesbian detective fiction. Forrest was writing Kate at a time when simply allowing a lesbian character to be the professional detective rather than the victim, suspect or side character was considerably more unusual.
And Kate isn't there simply to provide representation.
She's the homicide detective.
She's the one who gets the body, the suspects, the evidence and the questions.
Exactly where she belongs.
Perfect for readers who love: lesbian police detectives, classic crime fiction, LAPD mysteries, police procedurals, long-running detective series and pioneering lesbian fiction.
12. Murder Most Actual by Alexis Hall
A remote Scottish castle.
A snowstorm.
A group of people who can't leave.
And then somebody starts killing them.
This is precisely why I don't go anywhere.
Murder Most Actual takes the classic closed-circle mystery and gives it a sapphic centre. True-crime podcaster Liza and her wife Hanna head to a Scottish hotel hoping that getting away together might help their struggling marriage.
Instead, they get murder.
The book deliberately plays with Golden Age detective-fiction conventions, with Liza becoming considerably more involved in the mystery than anyone planning a relaxing marital getaway might reasonably expect. Kobo describes it as a cosy mystery inspired by classic detective fiction, with a podcaster rather than a conventional private eye at its centre.
I particularly like its place on this list because the central sapphic relationship is already established.
We're not waiting for two women to meet over the corpse and eventually fall in love.
Liza and Hanna are married.
Their relationship has problems.
And now they're trapped together somewhere people are being murdered.
Romantic.
Possibly not the second honeymoon either of them had in mind, but definitely memorable.
Perfect for readers who love: lesbian married couples, Scottish settings, isolated murder mysteries, snowed-in suspects, amateur sleuths, true crime and classic whodunnits.
13. Reasonable Doubt by Carsen Taite
Now we're moving into legal mystery territory.
Reasonable Doubt brings together criminal investigation, courtroom tension and lesbian romance, which makes it a good change of pace after our private investigators and amateur sleuths.
Ellery Durand has built her career as a criminal defence attorney, but when a murder case puts her on a collision course with Detective Sarah Flores, the investigation becomes considerably more complicated. The two women approach justice from different sides of the system, and neither is particularly inclined to simply accept the other's version of events.
Which, naturally, makes the attraction between them much more interesting.
I like mysteries where the central women don't automatically agree. A detective and a defence attorney are supposed to question evidence differently. One is trying to build the case while the other is professionally obligated to find the weaknesses in it.
Add murder, secrets and attraction, and there are plenty of reasons for sparks.
If your preferred sapphic mystery books sit somewhere between crime fiction and romance, Carsen Taite is well worth exploring. Her legal background also gives her crime and courtroom stories a distinctive flavour.
Perfect for readers who love: lesbian legal mysteries, detectives and lawyers, courtroom drama, murder investigations, professional conflict and sapphic romantic suspense.
14. Blood Ties by Susie Fleming
I'm sneaking one of my own crime novels onto the list, but with an important distinction.
Blood Ties isn't a sapphic romance.
When I'm not writing lesbian romance as Ruby Scott, I write crime under my real name, Susie Fleming, and Blood Ties is the first DI Viv Wylde investigation.
And because we're talking about female detectives, murder investigations and women who refuse to stop digging when something doesn't make sense, I couldn't resist including Viv.
The story begins with a brutal daylight execution at Stirling Bridge. A man is dead, a little terrier named Finn has been left behind, and Detective Inspector Viv Wylde and her Major Investigation Team have a murder to solve.
Viv has recently relocated from Yorkshire to Scotland with her elderly mother, so she's dealing with a new home and a new team while trying to unravel a case that quickly expands beyond a single killing.
Family secrets, organised crime and competing loyalties begin surfacing as Viv digs deeper, and the respectable version of events starts looking considerably less convincing.
Viv herself is one of the reasons I love writing this series. She's experienced and determined, but she has a life outside the investigation, a team around her and enough complications of her own without murderers adding to them.
So this one is here for the readers who enjoy the detective side of sapphic mystery recommendations and don't require the crime novel itself to contain a sapphic romance.
Also, Finn.
I couldn't leave Finn out.
Perfect for readers who love: female detectives, Scottish crime fiction, police procedurals, murder investigations, family secrets, organised crime, investigative teams and dogs who unexpectedly become part of the case.
15. They Never Learn by Layne Fargo
And we're finishing with a woman who isn't trying to catch the killer.
She is the killer.
Scarlett Clark is an English professor at Gorman University.
She's also a serial killer.
Her targets are men she believes deserve punishment, and she's become extremely good at making their deaths look like accidents. Every year she chooses another victim, carefully plans his death and then returns to her apparently ordinary academic life.
Except this time things start becoming considerably more difficult to control.
The university begins investigating the growing number of deaths, Scarlett becomes increasingly interested in the woman leading that investigation, and maintaining the separation between her secret life and respectable professional identity becomes harder.
Running alongside Scarlett's story is Carly, a freshman whose university experience takes a dark turn after her roommate is sexually assaulted.
Eventually, the two narratives begin moving towards one another.
They Never Learn sits firmly on the darker edge of this list. It's part psychological thriller, part murder story and part revenge fantasy, with a bisexual female serial killer at its centre rather than a conventional detective. The question isn't simply who did it?
We already know.
The tension comes from watching Scarlett try to stay several moves ahead while wondering how long she can possibly continue getting away with murder.
Not exactly a cosy mystery to read with a cup of tea.
Although I'd still have the tea.
Perfect for readers who love: bisexual antiheroines, female serial killers, dark academia, revenge thrillers, morally complicated women, psychological suspense and sapphic attraction.
Why Lesbian Detectives Belong in Crime Fiction
For a long time, the classic fictional detective looked remarkably similar.
Usually male. Usually straight. Usually carrying some combination of a drinking problem, a failed marriage and an inability to follow direct orders.
To be fair, I quite like that detective too.
But there is something particularly satisfying about opening a crime novel and finding a lesbian or bisexual woman standing over the body asking the questions.
And characters such as Katherine V. Forrest's Kate Delafield matter because they showed that lesbian women didn't have to exist at the edges of crime fiction. They could be the detective. They could carry an entire series, solve murders, make mistakes, have relationships and come back for another case.
Today's sapphic mystery books have expanded that even further.
We have police detectives and private investigators, but also podcasters, teenagers, lawyers, academics and ordinary women who notice something doesn't add up and make the questionable decision to investigate it themselves.
Sometimes their sexuality is central to the mystery.
Sometimes it affects how they understand a witness or community.
And sometimes she's simply a lesbian who has a murder to solve.
I'd like considerably more of that last one.
Representation doesn't always have to be the story.
Sometimes the story can be: there's a body, everybody is lying and the lesbian detective would quite like to know who did it.
Sapphic Mystery vs Sapphic Thriller: What's the Difference?
Mysteries and thrillers overlap constantly, which is why you'll find a few books on this list that could comfortably sit in either category.
The simplest distinction is the question driving the story.
A sapphic mystery usually asks:
What happened?
Who killed her? Where did the missing woman go? Which suspect is lying? What happened seventeen years ago? What piece of evidence has everyone overlooked?
The protagonist is trying to uncover information that has been hidden from her and, ideally, from us.
A sapphic thriller is more likely to ask:
What's going to happen next?
The danger may already be known. We might know who the killer is. We might even be inside the killer's head. The tension comes from whether somebody will escape, whether another person will die or whether the protagonist can stop something before it's too late.
Then you have books that cheerfully do both.
They Never Learn, for example, turns the traditional murder mystery on its head because we're following a woman who commits the murders. The suspense doesn't depend on discovering her identity.
We already know exactly who she is.
If it's the darker, faster and more dangerous side of that equation you enjoy most, have a look at my Best Lesbian Thrillers list next.
From Cosy Mystery to Noir: Choosing Your Next Sapphic Mystery
One of the nicest things about lesbian mystery books is how much variety sits underneath that label.
Want something historical and atmospheric?
Try Blackmail, My Love.
Want a classic lesbian police detective?
Start exploring Kate Delafield.
Want teenagers forming their own investigative team?
How to Find a Missing Girl is waiting.
Want a Scottish murder mystery in an isolated setting with a married sapphic couple?
Murder Most Actual might be more your thing.
And if what you really want is a morally questionable woman who may be considerably more dangerous than the people around her?
Well, They Never Learn exists.
The trick is working out which part of the mystery appeals to you most.
I tend to like the investigation itself. Give me interviews, contradictory statements, old photographs, witnesses who remember things differently and one tiny detail that suddenly changes everything we thought we knew.
I want to suspect everybody at least once.
Including the nice old woman who brought the detective a cup of tea.
Especially her.
Sapphic Mystery Books Don't Need a Romance to Work
This is an important distinction, particularly if you've arrived here from one of my lesbian romance lists.
Sapphic doesn't automatically mean romance.
A lesbian detective can investigate a murder without falling in love while she does it.
A bisexual private investigator can have relationships and hookups without the book promising a central romantic arc.
A mystery can explore sapphic communities, identity or relationships while keeping the crime firmly at the centre of the story.
And that's why I've deliberately included different types of books here.
Some combine mystery and romance.
Others contain sapphic relationships alongside the investigation.
Some simply give us lesbian or bisexual women occupying the roles that heterosexual characters have occupied in crime fiction forever.
All of those belong on a sapphic bookshelf.
The important thing is knowing what you're picking up.
If you're primarily looking for romance, choose one of the books where the relationship has a substantial role.
If you want bodies, clues and interrogations?
You've got plenty of those too.
Why Sapphic Murder Mysteries Make Such Good Series
One mystery is good.
Six mysteries featuring the same detective are considerably better.
Long-running detective fiction lets us know the investigator in a way a standalone rarely can.
The murder is solved.
The detective's life usually isn't.
Across a series, we get to see relationships develop, careers change and consequences carry from one investigation into the next. A detective might solve the crime in book one while making a spectacular mess of her personal life that follows her for another three books.
That's particularly valuable in lesbian detective series because the protagonist gets to exist beyond a single storyline about her sexuality.
She can fall in love.
Fall out of love.
Get promoted.
Argue with her boss.
Make a terrible decision.
Solve another murder.
Acquire a dog.
I'm particularly fond of that last one.
It's one reason established series such as Katherine V. Forrest's Kate Delafield books have remained important to lesbian crime fiction, and why I enjoy writing a recurring detective myself.
You don't have to say goodbye when the murderer is finally caught.
There's always another body eventually.
At least there is if the author has anything to do with it.
Frequently Asked Questions About Sapphic Mystery Books
What are the best sapphic mystery books?
A good starting point is The Last Place You Look by Kristen Lepionka if you want a private investigator, The Verifiers by Jane Pek for a contemporary amateur sleuth, and Katherine V. Forrest's Kate Delafield series if you want classic lesbian detective fiction.
For YA readers, How to Find a Missing Girl by Victoria Wlosok and The Last Girls Standing by Jennifer Dugan offer very different takes on sapphic mystery and suspense.
What is a sapphic mystery book?
A sapphic mystery is a mystery novel in which lesbian, bisexual or other sapphic women play a significant role.
That doesn't necessarily mean the book is a romance.
The central character might be a lesbian police detective, a bisexual private investigator or a sapphic amateur sleuth. Alternatively, sapphic relationships or communities might be important to the mystery itself.
Are there mystery books with lesbian detectives?
Yes, and some have been around for decades.
Katherine V. Forrest's Kate Delafield is one of the best-known examples of a lesbian police detective in crime fiction. More recent mystery novels have given us lesbian and bisexual private investigators, amateur detectives and teenage sleuths too.
Are there sapphic murder mystery books?
Absolutely. Sapphic murder mysteries range from traditional whodunnits and police procedurals to historical noir, psychological mysteries and closed-circle murders.
If your ideal reading experience involves a suspicious death and a woman determined to find out what really happened, you've got options.
Are sapphic mysteries always romances?
No.
Some sapphic mystery books include a strong romantic storyline, but others place the investigation firmly at the centre.
If you specifically want both, look for lesbian romantic suspense or sapphic mystery romance, where solving the crime and developing the relationship both receive significant attention.
What are the best lesbian detective series?
Katherine V. Forrest's Kate Delafield novels are an important place to start if you're interested in the history of lesbian detective fiction.
Kristen Lepionka's Roxane Weary series is another strong choice for readers wanting a contemporary bisexual private investigator and multiple cases to follow.
Are there sapphic cosy mysteries?
Yes. Sapphic characters are increasingly appearing in cosy and amateur-sleuth mysteries alongside the darker police procedurals and thrillers traditionally associated with crime fiction.
Murder Most Actual by Alexis Hall is worth considering if you like a more playful take on classic murder-mystery conventions with an established sapphic couple at its centre.
Are there sapphic YA mystery books?
Yes. How to Find a Missing Girl, There Can Only Be Six, Two Sides to Every Murder and The Last Girls Standing all bring sapphic characters into YA mystery, suspense or thriller territory.
They range from amateur detective stories and missing-person investigations to considerably darker murder mysteries.
What's the difference between lesbian crime fiction and lesbian mystery fiction?
Lesbian crime fiction is the broader category. It can include mysteries, police procedurals, thrillers, noir, legal crime novels and stories told from the criminal's perspective.
A lesbian mystery usually centres more specifically on uncovering the truth behind a crime or unexplained event.
There's plenty of overlap, so you'll often see the same book described both ways.
More Sapphic Books to Add to Your TBR
If you've reached the end of fifteen murder investigations and your immediate response is excellent, where are the bodies in the next fifteen?, I can help.
Start with my 10 Best Lesbian Thrillers for more danger, twists and women making increasingly questionable decisions.
If you prefer your sapphic stories darker, head to 15 Best Lesbian Dark Romance Books.
For women operating in considerably more secretive territory, try my sapphic spy and thriller books, including The Turning and The Reckoning.
And if you'd like to put the murder weapons down for a moment, there's plenty more to explore:
10 Best Lesbian Books You Need to Read
15 Best Supernatural Lesbian Fiction Books
15 Best Small-Town Sapphic Romance Books
15 Best Lesbian BDSM Romance Books
Because apparently my website can take you from murder investigation to small-town romance to kneel remarkably quickly.
I'm comfortable with that.
Give Me a Woman With a Mystery to Solve
I read romance because I want to know how two people are ever going to find their way to each other.
I read crime because I want to know what everybody is hiding.
And people are nearly always hiding something.
That's why I love a good female detective. She keeps asking the question after everyone else has accepted the answer. She notices the detail that doesn't belong. She understands that the version of ourselves we show the world isn't necessarily the whole truth.
Sometimes she's polished and experienced.
Sometimes she's an absolute disaster.
Sometimes she's investigating her first murder.
Sometimes she's already solved enough of them to know that when somebody says there's a perfectly reasonable explanation, there almost certainly isn't.
And increasingly, she gets to be lesbian, bisexual or sapphic without that being the only interesting thing about her.
Give her a complicated love life if you like.
Give her an ex she really shouldn't call.
Give her a wife waiting at home.
Or give her absolutely no romance whatsoever.
Just give her a good mystery.
And preferably don't make the nice woman with the tea the murderer.
I've already decided I don't trust her.
