The Hall of Fame

I read my first mysteries, Perry Mason oldies, in 1969 and fell in love
with the mystery genre. Over subsequent years, from age 9 to 29, I
read any mystery I could get my hands on - everything from Miss
Marple to Mrs. Pollifax, Inspector Maigret to Inspector Morse,
Sherlocke Holmes to Kinsey Millhone. None of the main characters
were ever lesbian, but that didn't dull my interest in the genre. Still, I
wished for a strong lesbian sleuth, never quite expecting that my
wish would come true.

And then along came Ellen Hart. Though Barbara Wilson's lesbian
mystery novel Murder In The Collective and Katherine V. Forrest's
Amateur City predate Hart's Hallowed Murder, it was Hart's 1989
Jane Lawless mystery that I read first. Wow! That was my response
to finally reading a mystery with a lesbian protagonist. After the
hundreds--maybe thousands--of mysteries I had read all my life,
finally Ellen Hart wrote one for me. And then another. And another...

Jane and her wacky best friend Cordelia Thorn have entertained
and enthralled me through thirteen (soon to be a fourteen) increasingly
complex mysteries. In addition, their author has managed to publish
seven Sophie Greenway culinary mysteries. Because Ellen Hart lives
in Minnesota, I have also had the opportunity to meet her, get to know
her, go on tour with her, and call her a friend.

Ellen Hart is not only prolific and enduring, but also endearing. Below
is information about her books. Long may she pen!
~Lori L. Lake

Hallowed Murder (1989)

The police call Allison Lord's drowning a suicide, but her
housemates at her University of Minnesota sorority insist it
was murder. That's when alumnae advisor, Jane Lawless,
steps in to find out the truth. Assisted by her irrepressible
sidekick Cordelia, Jane searches for clues, and what she finds
is as chilling as the Minnesota winter. At a lonely vacation
lodge, amidst the icy snow drifts, she risks her life to ensnare
a cunning killer.

Vital Lies (1991)

An old friend invites Minneapolis restaurateur, Jane Lawless,
to her Victorian inn to celebrate the winter solstice--and inves-
tigate a murder from years before. Yet as soon as Jane and
her theatrical pal, Cordelia, arrive, they face broken glass in
the parking lot, dead animals in the bedrooms, a bomb scare--
malicious pranks that eventually lead to another homicide. As
falling snow blots out the rest of the world, and ghosts of the
past rise up with a vengeance, Jane finds herself tracking the
twisted psyche of a dangerous killer.

Stage Fright (1992)

Aging actor Torald Werness just had his last affair, his last
drink, and his last curtain call. In a darkened theater, restrau-
teur-sleuth Jane Lawless finds his dead body impaled on a
part of the set--and herself a suspect. Yet Jane believes the
motive for the murder lies within the dead man's family, a
glamorous Midwestern theatrical dynasty, whose talented
members give their best performances off stage. Jane and her
uninhibited crony, Cordelia, start digging into the family dirt,
and discover a tangled web of deceit.

A Killing Cure (1993)

After seventy-five years of high-minded respectability, the
Amelia Gower Women's Club is in trouble. One distinguished
director has been strangled. And another, the founder's grand-
daughter, has taken a fatal plunge down a third-floor staircase.
As soon as restrauteur-sleuth Jane Lawless begins a bit of
discreet snooping into these high profile murders, wheels
within wheels start to turn, meshing the private lives of Gower
friends and family with the club's inner workings and the
wealthy Gower Foundations's covert agenda. Even Jane's new
lover, Dorrie, is somehow involved. But best friend Cordelia
hangs tough, and a good thing too, for the way things are
going, the Gower Club murders may well branch out to include
Jane herself.

A Small Sacrifice (1994)

When Jane Lawless' wise-cracking sidekick, Cordelia Thorn,
is summoned to Summer Green, Wisconsin, for a reunion of
the Shevlin Underground--a group made up of Cordelia's five
closest theatre friends from college--it quickly becomes
evident that reminiscing is not all that is on the weekend's
agenda. One of the friends, soap opera star Diana Stanwood,
is an alcoholic whose condition is so dangerous that her friends
have gathered for an intervention to save her life. Emotions are
running high. As the story twists and turns around the elusive
lives of these five college friends, one of them drops dead.
Alarmed, Cordelia sends for her old friend, Jane, to do some
quiet investigating. Together they follow their hunches into
the not-so-carefree past and back to the troubled present,
where they find a single match could blow up all their lives.

Faint Praise (1995)

When a well-known television personality meets with an
untimely demise dressed in compromising attire, a sinister
series events begin to unfold in the shadow of Minneapolis'
famed Foshay Tower, entangling the Twin Cities in a web
of deceit. In chic Linden Lofts, where the man lived, the
other tenants are spooked, and Jane Lawless soon finds out
why. They, like the deceased owner, have secrets to conceal,
and the ghostly someone with a full set of keys who's scout-
ing out their apartments may soon make that impossible.
Can one of the Linden Loft's upscale professionals really
be an aspiring blackmailer? Before Jane and her theatrical pal,
Cordelia, can make sure, a brutal murder ups the ante.

Robber's Wine (1996)

When Minneapolis amateur sleuth Jane Lawless and her
saucy sidekick, Cordelia Thorn, set out for the sleepy shores
of Pokegama Lake in northern Minnesota to escape the urban
swelter, hope for a little R & R quickly heads south. Before
they've even had a chance to unpack, they find that old friend,
Belle Dumont, has vanished, only hours before she was to
reveal startling news to her three grown children. The kids
and Belle's lover deny any knowledge of this mysterious
bombshell. After being misled again and again, Jane begins to
suspect the entire family of hiding something dark -- and
deadly.

Wicked Games (1998)

Jane Lawless has worked hard to make her Minneapolis
restaurant a success, and she's finally reaping the financial
rewards. Yet even the demands and excitement of being a
popular restaurateur and living the good life don't bring the
same satisfaction they once did. Jane needs a bigger challenge.
A mystery to solve. The thrill of the chase. When Jane rents
her third-story apartment to a new tenant, children's book
author Elliot Beauman, she unwittingly opens the door to a
sinister, decades-old mystery that has been waiting patiently
to unfold--in her own house. Meanwhile, Jane assists a
detective in tracking down clues about a new neighbor,
Patricia, whose husband died under suspicious circum-
stances. Patricia is eager to become friends with Jane--friends
or even a lover--though she knows Jane is immersed in a
long-distance relationship with the attractive but secretive
Dr. Julia Martinsen. Little does Jane know that the strange
lodger upstairs, an attractive neighbor, and a volatile love
affair are just the beginning of her problems.

Hunting the Witch (1999)

Minneapolis restaurant owner Jane Lawless has a knack for
cooking--and an uncanny talent for detection. But assisting a
private investigator has left her with a serious head injury...
and vulnerable enough to say yes when a former lover offers
to help her recuperate. She never suspects that returning to Dr.
Julia Martinsen's TLC will take her out of the frying pan and
into the fire. Nervous and jittery, the doctor is hiding some-
thing, and Jane -- in love, but wary -- needs to know what it is.
Since desperate times call for desperate measures, Jane takes
matters into her own hands and does some checking into
Julia's life, both past and present. What she learns makes her
blood run cold. Now, a man lies dead in an elevator shaft, the
doctor is clearly in danger, and Jane can either turn to the
bottle for a way out, or find a killer, before death becomes the
final way to leave a lover.

The Merchant of Venus (2001)

Jane Lawless is a woman at a crossroads--her lover has left,
she's recovering from a vicious attack sustained last year, and
the holidays are closing in. With no one to help her ring in the
new year, Jane reluctantly agrees to accompany her good
friend Cordelia Thorn on a peculiar holiday trip: Cordelia's
estranged sister, Broadway star Octavia Thorn, has asked
them to attend her wedding. Octavia getting married is no
surprise--she's done it three times before--but her candidate
for hubby number four certainly is. Roland Lester is a re-
clusive eighty-three-year-old retired Hollywood director, a
relic from the golden age of Tinseltown with a controversial
past. No one can understand how the two met, much less
fell in love. When the bodies start to drop, Jane realizes it
might not be love at all that brought the young diva and the
aged director together, but something much deeper, and
perhaps more sinister. Delving deep into film history, Jane
finds unsettling connections between Roland and a murder
that was never solved. Finding out what happened forty
years ago could be the key to unlocking the mystery of
Octavia's curious marriage, but laying bare such long-buried
secrets also promises grave consequences for everyone
involved.

Immaculate Midnight (2002)

When suspected arsonist and serial killer Bobby Alto
commits suicide in his cell and it doesn't end the Twin Cities
murders, Jane Lawless begins to wonder whether a "psycho
[has] declared open season" on everyone involved in the
case or if the dreaded Midnight Man is still on the loose.
Jane's father, who was Bobby's defense attorney, is in
danger, and so is Jane herself, as it seems the Alto family
contains more than one seriously disturbed member in
Immaculate Midnight, Ellen Hart's 11th mystery starring
the lesbian restaurateur and amateur detective.

Restaurateur Jane Lawless is thrilled to be catering the
wedding of some family friends, Nick and Lauren Clifford,
but when Jane arrives at the wedding, she's in for a shock
of a lifetime-and one that could jeopardize her career. The
food has been spiked with hallucinogenic mushrooms and
the drug-hazed guests are engaged in reckless behavior. When
the groom takes a near fatal dive into an empty pool, an
investigation begins and Jane turns to her best friend Cordelia
Thorn for help in clearing her name. But when Cordelia's sister,
Octavia, suddenly deserts her infant daughter on Cordelia's
doorstep, Jane is on her own. Events take a turn for the worse
when the father of the groom comes up against shocking
accusations, and it's up to Jane to uncover the truth.

The Iron Girl (August 2005)

After years spent mourning the death of her partner, Christine
Kane, Minneapolis restaurateur Jane Lawless is moving on. As
she sorts through the boxes of Christines belongings, she is
shocked to discover a gun. Before her illness, Christine, a real
estate agent, was selling a house for the Simoneau family. The
night before her death, three family members were murdered.
Jane always assumed Christine knew nothing of the Simoneau
family secrets, but the gun suggests otherwise. As Jane searches
for clues to understand what really happened to Christine those
many years ago, her pursuit leads her deep into danger.

Night Vision (2006)

When movie star Joanna Kasimir returns home to Minnesota to
perform in a production of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" at
Cordelia Thorn's St. Paul theater, she has a lot to be afraid of. Her
ex-husband, Gordon, who once served prison time for stalking her,
may be back to his old tricks. At Cordelia's encouragement, Joanna
enlists her old chum Jane to keep an eye on Gordon. Meanwhile,
Jane's best friend, David, who is also Joanna's brother, arrives
hiding secrets that he's afraid to reveal even to Jane. When Joanna's
ex winds up dead, David is the suspect. But any number of Joanna's
fans may have killed Gordon, and it's up to Jane to figure out who's
responsible.

The Mortal Groove (2007)

Minneapolis restaurateur and amateur sleuth Jane Lawless is in the
middle of ringing in the New Year the best way she knows how --with
her family, friends, and some excellent champagne -- when the biggest
financial backers in Minnesota politics break up the party with a little
backroom proposition for her father: How'd he like to be the state's
next governor? Flattered, Ray Lawless, a retired defense attorney, agrees
to run, and the latecomer's sprint to the state capital is going great until
reporters and opponents start digging up the kind of dirt thatis more
valuable than gold out on the campaign trail. He and his family are fair
game, but worse than that, so are the men running his campaign. Their
secrets, involving the mysterious death of a young woman, have been
buried since the summer they all came home from Vietnam. Unfortunately
for Jane and her father, those secrets won't stay that way for long.

Sweet Poison (2008)

Ellen Hart's 16th Jane Lawless mystery is due in the stores in
late 2008. Stay tuned for information

All contents of this web site, some of which are owned by Ellen Hart's
and her publishers, are protected by U.S. and International copyright
laws. No infringement of copyright laws is intended by the spotlighting
of these books in honor of the author.
Please contact lori@lorillake.com if you have questions.