Lavender House

By Lev AC Rosen
The first book in the Detective Evander ‘Andy’ Mill series

I asked myself, “Who is the target audience?” It was very violent. Was it meant to illicit compassion? Characters were interesting, nice to see so many queer characters. Mystery was not strong. Appreciated the peek into San Francisco–now a beacon of queer culture but not then.

The beating was hard to read. Seems really accurate the transition from WWII to regular life when you are queer. Characters more intriguing than the mystery.

Novel more than mystery. Did a great job with sense of time, place, ambience.

Mystery was fine, but I enjoyed the details about the time period. I liked the characters, felt they were deeply drawn. And I appreciated the arc of the characters. I liked all the discussion about family. Family was the main theme. Details around the military for queer people was really interesting.

OK mystery. More about the character development. I like that the setup for this is the same as noir fiction but is so different.

I enjoyed it quite a lot. Mystery wasn’t fabulous. Really liked it; I’m reading the next one.

More interesting as to what happened years ago and how the lead figured it out. I liked the world building. Interesting characters, very compelling.

I just didn’t like the detective; couldn’t get past the first 25%. Liked the writing but the pace was too slow.