Be Gay, Do Crime
Molly Llewellyn
A follow-up to their runaway success Peach Pit: Sixteen Stories of Unsavory Women, editors Molly Llewellyn and Kristel Buckley return with Be Gay, Do Crime, a celebration of queer chaos from an all-queer author lineup featuring Myriam Gurba, Emily Austin, Alissa Nutting, and Francesca Ekwuyasi A trans woman makes increasingly frequent hoax calls to a business where she's had a negative experience, watching the consequences with perverse joy. A group of aging queers turns to bank robbery to stop the sale of their bungalow complex to a development company. As the president prepares to give a speech, two women lurk among the journalists, ready to shoot him. And an aspiring author takes to stealing items from strangers’ homes in a kind of cosmic redistribution each time one of her relationships fail. In sixteen brilliant, wild-eyed stories, Be Gay, Do Crime delivers a celebration and reckoning of why queer people turn to crime– be it unintentionally, as a means of survival, as protest, as rescue, or to right injustices big and small.
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4 stars | Coming out on June 3rd! These delightfully chaotic stories feature queer women carving out space for themselves in the world and committing acts of deviance along the way. This book was deeply emotional at times, yet wonderfully unhinged at others. I never knew if the next story would make me laugh, cry, or sit there and dissociate about it afterward (in the best way). I loved that this collection was set in the characters' everyday, often monotonous lives rather than some sort of fantastical world of crime you would find in mystery/thriller novels, because it made the stories hit closer to home. Some of my favorites were: ✨"The Meaning of Life" by Myriam Lacroix: Three women, an abandoned baby, and a tiny apartment make for an unexpected found family. ✨"Peep Show" by Alissa Nutting: Think Schrodinger's cat meets peeping Tom. ✨"Of Course, A Curse" by Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya: Grand theft and a hat that simply won't disappear. ✨"Two Hundred Channels of Conflict" by Mac Crane: A tale of marital conflict, bad dates, and catfishing that starts with a lack of cable and a wrong number. I'd very much recommend this if you're in the mood for a little dose of unpredictable queer chaos! I'm definitely going to grab a physical copy of this once it's released. Many thanks to the publisher, Dzanc Books, for providing an advanced copy in return for an honest review!
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