Traditionally, the detective is marginalized within his community by his disgust at other people's greed and hypocrisy. But Russell is at the center of a circle of friends that includes not simply other gay men, but his lesbian best friend from college and her lover, his mysterious straight female friend and neighbor Sereena, the female professionals with whom he shares an office complex, and even the antagonistic Darren Kirsch, a snidely macho family man on the Saskatoon police force to whom Russell must periodically turn for information.

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The friends prepare meals for each other, share confidences, and rely upon each other in times of crisis. Hovering over the group is Russell's mother, who lives to feed and tend to others, and a lesbian couple who operate Colourful Mary's, the local restaurant where one of the women moves from table to table attending to her guests' needs, and the other stands in the doorway of her kitchen anxiously studying the faces of the diners to make certain that they are enjoying what she has cooked.

Traditionally, the detective is an existentialist hero, for no matter how jaded he has become by the corruption that he has witnessed, he labors Sisyphus-like to restore a moral order that he understands will invariably be shattered by still another malefactor, his next case forcing him to descend once again into the labyrinth out of which he had only recently found his way.

In contrast, Bidulka's Russell Quant learns to identify with the concept of ubuntu, which a native South African translates for him as meaning "I am what I am because of who we all are." "No bad deed against anyone is perpetrated without consequence," Russell is told, "otherwise all bad deeds against humanity will flourish"--proof of which emerges in a case that links South African apartheid with an instance of Canadian .

For Bidulka, one's own humanity lies in finding a way of celebrating, not diminishing or demeaning, another person. Russell's community of friends offers a telling instance of "Saskatoon ubuntu."

Since the 1960s, Canadian gay and lesbian writers have produced a vibrant body of fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry.

In the decades since Stonewall, gay male mystery fiction has burgeoned in United States, both in quantity and in quality, and has increasingly been issued by mainstream presses.

Writer and editor Katherine V. Forrest has played a major role in bringing lesbian fiction to the forefront of the mystery and science fiction genres.

Best known as the author of the Dave Brandstetter mystery series, Hansen also published a considerable body of nonmystery fiction and poetry, most of it dominated by homosexual characters and themes.

Mystery writer Michael Nava has increasingly been recognized as an important novelist whose mature work transcends the limited expectations of a popular and highly specialized genre.

John Morgan Wilson is best known today as the author of a gay male mystery series featuring a flawed and often exasperating amateur detective named Benjamin Justice.