Tell Me What You Like

Tell Me What You Like is the 1993 debut of Kate Allen's Alison Kaine series, with a lesbian Denver beat cop pulled into an off-duty investigation when a member of the local leather community is murdered. The book is honest about its world in a way that almost no mystery in the early 90s could afford to be, and that honesty is the engine.

Alison is a sharp narrator. The Denver gay-and-lesbian community of the period is rendered with real specificity. The SM-community texture, which the book treats as community rather than as backdrop, is handled with adult care that the genre at the time often refused.

Four stars. A genuinely important small piece of 90s queer crime fiction. Recommended to readers interested in the underread shelves of the period.