By Clea Simon

The book marks a marvelous entrance by an important new heroine onto the mystery stage: a drag queen, who goes in and out of her drag character as she investigates the murder of a friend.

Murder in the Dressing Room by Holly Stars. Berkley, 368 pp., $19.

Sometimes a fun little read can be so much more. And if Murder in the Dressing Room, a drag world amateur sleuth whodunit by playwright and comedian Holly Stars, is not exactly world changing, it marks a marvelous entrance by an important new heroine onto the mystery stage: a drag queen, who goes in and out of her drag character as she investigates the murder of a friend.

Murder in the Dressing Room is far from the first LGBTQIA+ mystery. Greg Herren, Neil Plakcy, and countless others have written queer and non-binary characters for years, and Shane K. Morton and Stephanie Dragon Luce, among others, have drag queen protagonists. But Stars can step into their company easily, even if she’s wearing the sky-high platforms she has sported in her own London shows. Like Stars, her protagonist is a drag queen, Misty Divine. The difference being that poor Misty is forced by circumstances into solving the murder of her drag mother, Lady Lady, whose body she finds in Lady Lady’s London club only minutes after her own performance.

From the start, Misty’s persona is strong and believable, even in her reaction to discovering her mentor’s body: “Her drag queen instincts were kicking in, and she desperately wanted to put Lady Lady’s lavender wig back on, to cover up her exposed bald head.” Appropriate to the character, Misty spends a fair amount of time describing clothes: “She had worn a bright blue trouser suit, flared at the ankles, and a blue wig that was whisked up so it looked like a Mr. Whippy ice cream. Her shoes were navy glitter platform heels and she’d even pressed on glittery nails for the occasion, white ones. Tacky, but perfect.” For interviewing a suspect, that is.

As important, Stars understands the amateur sleuth imperative: give her protagonist a compelling reason to investigate rather than hand the case over to the authorities. Misty and her colleagues are both admired and reviled, as we see from the reactions of the public and various Uber drivers as Misty dashes around London. When one of the detectives on the case shows his bias — he insists on addressing Misty as “Mr. Fulton,” her out-of-drag name, even when she is in full drag — she has real reason to fear Lady Lady’s death will not be taken seriously.

In addition, her community’s tenuous status also serves as a credible excuse for not revealing information: “Telling the police … will cost the drag scene a venue, a safe space. It would turn everything Lady Lady built into just another sad story about queer venues… We have to protect what she created,” she tells her boyfriend Miles, a constant support.

All this said, the book suffers from some first-time author problems. Occasional awkward phrases, some amusing — “She felt frustrated, like she could burp with frustration at any second” — some less so, pepper the book. And to this cisgendered reader, the complexity of the pronouns was a little daunting at first: Misty uses feminine pronouns, Joe Fulton (her non-drag persona) the nonbinary “they.” As is appropriate, other characters are given their choices, with several drag kings and queens switching between gendered pronouns or between gendered and nonbinary, depending on their personae at the time.

Between the story’s momentum and the lively and full-bodied characters, however, such problems soon disappear. Overall, Stars’ writing is lively and profane, with expletives a common amplifier (“the nightclub she’d just inherited might be dodgy as fuck”). Her characters drink too much and live and love proudly. Along the way, Stars makes the case for a drag queen as the perfect amateur sleuth: “Misty was reminded that she was a drag queen. A powerful mystical creature who could do and say whatever she wanted.” Readers are likely to agree.

Clea Simon is the Somerville-based author most recently of Bad Boy Beat.