From Dorian Gray to Tom Ripley, there was a time when if LGBTIQA+ characters appeared in crime stories at all, it was invariably as the first body, the villain, the ‘morally dubious’ suspect or the heavily coded ‘queer’. Recent decades have seen a more diverse cast in crime fiction created by LGBTIQA+ authors, but when gay American crime writer Rob Osler coined the term ‘Quozy Mystery’ in 2022, it heralded the possibility that commercial queer crime fiction has arrived. BAD Sydney hears from queer writers working during this tipping point, discussing how far representation has come, whether Australian publishers are leading or following reader demand, and to what extent crime fiction is a place to explore sexual and gender identities.