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goes wrong. On the surface, everything about classic detective stories seems straightforward.

It's all very black and white. People are either good or bad, guilty or innocent.

There's not a lot of gray in between.

These easy distinctions are what some readers find appealing about murder mysteries,

since the idea that there are actually definitive answers to life's questions can be very comforting.

Except if you dig a bit deeper, nothing is as simple as it seems.

In a scenario where anyone could be a suspect, nobody is really being honest or presenting their true self.

For a whole variety of different motives, everyone is playing a part.

The writers of detective stories from the 1920s and 30s used this as a way to hide subversive secret backstories for their characters in plain sight.

This is true particularly of gay and lesbian characters, some of whom have hidden depths that it's unusual

to find in works of this period. It's all there though, alongside

the murder weapons and the red herrings. You just have to know how to spot the queer clues.

Welcome to She Doneit. I'm Caroline Crampton. The dominant perception of the work of authors like Agatha Christie, Dorothy L

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