Lexin

There've been some lesbian P.I.s, both explicit and women who for some unfathomable reason just don't talk about their sex lives while contemplating corpses and dealing with cops. Apparently P.I.-ness requires the sort of hard-boiled loner-ness that was, and sometimes still is, common for gay characters not inhabiting gay romance or porn. I decided at one point that lesbian characters and lone-woman characters were functionally the same (this was in the late 70s, but not everything has changed enough to make it invalid) since neither needed *a man*, i.e., both types were flouting the patriarchy/romance imperative.

Also, have you run into a series of mysteries titled Slate, Vermilion, etc., in New England gay subculture and starring a gay man and a lesbian? Not deathless literature, exactly, but fun in its way.