Lavender House, 1952: the family seat of recently deceased matriarch Irene Lamontaine, head of the Lamontaine soap empire. This estate offers a unique freedom, where none of the residents or staff hide who they are. But to keep their secret, they've needed to keep others out. And now they're worried about keeping a murderer in.
Irene's widow hires Evander Mills to uncover the truth behind her mysterious death. Andy, recently fired from the San Francisco police department after being caught in a raid on a gay bar, is happy to accept - his calendar is wide open. And his secret is the kind of secret the Lamontaines understand.
Andy had never imagined a world like Lavender House. He's seduced by the safety and freedom found behind its gates, where a queer family lives honestly and openly. But that honesty doesn't extend to everything, and he quickly finds himself a pawn in a family game of old money, subterfuge, and jealousy - and Irene's death is only the beginning.
The gates of Lavender House can't lock out the real world forever, and running a soap empire can be a dirty business.
When I was in high school—in the early 1990s, for anyone interested—I would go to the public library in Skiatook, OK, and search for every single book I could find that featured a gay male character. At the time, I was desperate to read anything about who I might become as a gay man. I needed to know what my life could look like. You have to remember, we weren't on TV, and most movies with gay characters portrayed stereotypes of the worst kind. That’s not to say books were perfect in that regard. A lot of what I read was filled with self-hate and unhappy endings—and this was coming from gay authors. For the record, most classic gay lit is depressing. I'm glad I read those books, but for the most part, they aren’t ones I’d ever want to revisit.
The exceptions were the mystery books. In them, I found characters who were comfortable in their own skin and relatively well-adjusted. In Joseph Hansen’s Dave Brandstetter, Michael Nava’s Henry Rios, Richard Stevenson’s Donald Strachey, and the more "cozy" sleuths created by Mark Richard Zubro, I found characters who made me realize my future wasn’t all doom and gloom—a future where I could be happy.
The first time I dove into the world of Andy Mills, I knew I’d found another character who would have affected me the exact same way. But unlike the others, Andy is navigating a world where being gay could get you fired, committed to an asylum, or killed without anyone caring. He’s a character who has hit rock bottom and is struggling to recover—so when he finds Lavender House, he grabs on with both hands.
At Lavender House, he finds a group of people who can truly be themselves behind the gates of the estate, even if they play roles for the general public. Lavender House is a sanctuary, but like all insulated havens, a festering evil has started to blossom within its walls. Andy's job is to find and root out who planted the evil that ended in bloodshed.
I love an author who can craft a well-balanced mystery alongside characters that feel real and grounded. Andy has to be one of the most authentic characters I’ve come across in any genre. I absolutely adore this series, and it’s one I hope never ends. I want Andy to continue growing into his own skin and within the gay community. I want him to find happiness and fulfillment in life. I want to watch him fall in love and grow old. In the meantime, I’ll gladly read every twisty mystery he finds himself entangled in.
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