Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lavender House | 2022 | Lev A.C. Rosen / L.C. Rosen | Buy |
| 2 | The Bell in the Fog | 2023 | Lev A.C. Rosen / L.C. Rosen | Buy |
| 3 | Rough Pages | 2024 | Lev A.C. Rosen / L.C. Rosen | Buy |
| 4 | Mirage City | 2025 | Lev A.C. Rosen / L.C. Rosen | Buy |
The Evander Mills series by Lev A.C. Rosen is a queer noir mystery series set in 1950s San Francisco. Lavender House (2022) introduces Andy Mills, an ex-cop who lost his job after being outed, now working as a private investigator for a wealthy queer family. The Bell in the Fog (2023) and Rough Pages (2024) continue his cases, with Mirage City (2025) as the fourth entry.
The series puts a gay detective in the center of classic noir territory, where the social constraints of the 1950s create both obstacles and motivations for the mysteries. Rosen uses the private detective format to explore the hidden queer communities of postwar San Francisco, a real and well-documented historical reality. The books have been compared to the work of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, updated with characters who could not have been protagonists in the original noir era.