Three Queer Books About Crime, Deception, and Survival

When queerness meets the wrong side of the law

This week, LGBTQ Reads spotlighted a list of "be gay, do crime" fiction. That got us thinking. The overlap between queer stories and crime is older and richer than most readers know. It runs from pulp noir to literary memoir. These three books share one thread: a queer character who breaks rules to stay alive, stay free, or stay themselves. They are very different books. But together they make a strong case for crime as a queer subject.

Patricia Highsmith — The Price of Salt (1952, W.W. Norton)

Highsmith published this novel under a pen name. The risk was real. A lesbian love story with a happy ending was almost unpublishable in 1952. The book follows Therese, a young woman working in a New York department store. She meets Carol, an older woman in the middle of a divorce. They fall in love. Then Carol's husband hires a private detective to follow them.

The crime here is quiet. It is the crime of being watched, of having your private life used as evidence against you. Highsmith writes this with cold precision. She never sensationalises. The tension builds through small details: a motel room, a reel-to-reel tape recorder, a letter read by the wrong person.

What makes the book remarkable is its refusal to punish its characters. In 1952, that was almost revolutionary. The prose is restrained and exact. Highsmith trusts her reader. She does not explain emotions — she shows behaviour and lets you work it out.

A Dutch translation exists: Carol (De Bezige Bij). The 2015 film adaptation brought new readers to the novel, but the book is sharper and colder than the film.

This is for readers who like psychological tension. It rewards slow reading. Find it via your local bookshop or through outlets like Athenaeum or Bol.com.

Jean Genet — The Thief's Journal (1949, Gallimard / English: Grove Press)

Genet was a thief, a sex worker, and a convict. He was also one of the great French writers of the twentieth century. This memoir — part autobiography, part prose poem — follows his years drifting through Europe in the 1930s. He steals. He sells sex. He crosses borders illegally. He falls in love with criminals.

This is not a book about shame. Genet turns poverty and transgression into something close to beauty. His prose is baroque and strange. He is not reliable as a narrator. He knows this and uses it. The book asks what morality means when society has already decided you are outside it.

For a queer reader, there is something bracing here. Genet does not ask for acceptance. He builds his own value system from the materials available to him. That system includes desire, loyalty, and a very dark sense of humour.

The English translation by Bernard Frechtman (Grove Press) holds up well. No Dutch translation is currently in print. This is for readers who are comfortable with difficult, non-linear prose. It is not an easy book. But it stays with you.

Available via international booksellers and larger Dutch bookshops. Also findable as a second-hand paperback without much effort.

Piper Kerman — Orange Is the New Black (2010, Spiegel & Grau)

Most people know the Netflix series. The book is different. It is a memoir, and it is more measured than the show. Kerman served thirteen months in a federal prison in the early 2000s after a drug-money conviction from her early twenties. She was in a relationship with a woman at the time of the crime. She later married a man. The book does not make a big deal of this. It simply describes her life honestly.

What makes the memoir worth reading — especially alongside the series — is its focus on systems. Kerman is interested in what prison does to people over time. She writes about women she meets inside: their sentences, their families, their daily routines. She is a careful observer. The writing is clear and direct.

The queer element is present throughout but never the main subject. That feels true to life. Kerman's sexuality is one part of a larger story about class, justice, and luck.

A Dutch translation exists: Oranje is het nieuwe zwart (Ambo|Anthos). This is for readers who prefer non-fiction with a strong narrative drive. It works as a standalone book, separate from any knowledge of the series.

Available at most Dutch bookshops, both physical and online.

Three different crimes, one common thread

These three books approach queerness and crime from very different angles. Highsmith writes about the crime of surveillance. Genet writes about survival outside society's rules. Kerman writes about the aftermath of a real mistake and what the state does with it. None of them are comfortable books. All three take their subjects seriously.

If you are drawn to fiction where queerness shapes the story without dominating it, Highsmith is the place to start. If you want literary provocation, Genet. If you want non-fiction with political weight, Kerman.

Crime fiction and queer writing have always had something in common: both deal with people who live outside the lines others draw. These three books show what that can look like across three different eras and three very different lives. You can read more queer literary round-ups in our earlier pieces, including Three Queer Books About Friendship, Loyalty, and Betrayal and Three Queer Books About Home, Belonging, and Leaving.