Eve Zaremba, the Canadian writer who created Helen Keremos, one of the earliest lesbian detectives in genre fiction, in her 1978 novel A Reason to Kill, died on October 8, 2025.
Born in 1930 in Kalisz, Poland, Zaremba fled with her family to the United Kingdom after the outbreak of the Second World War and later emigrated to Canada. She graduated from the University of Toronto in 1963 and worked in advertising, marketing, real estate, and publishing, and ran a used bookstore in Toronto while writing her novels. She was a central figure in Toronto’s women’s liberation movement, helping to found The Women’s Place, the Lesbian Organization of Toronto, and Women Against Violence Against Women, and was a founding member of the feminist newspaper Broadside: A Feminist Review. She also ran her own small publishing imprint, Amanita Enterprises.
A Reason to Kill (1978) introduces private investigator Helen Keremos when a routine missing-person case involving eighteen-year-old Martin Millwell turns into a nightmare.
Work for a Million (1986) finds Keremos drawn into Toronto’s gay community after her friend Nate Ottoline remarks that everyone is crazy about a woman named Sonia. The novel was later adapted into a graphic novel by Amanda Deibert and Selena Goulding.
Beyond Hope (1987) sends Keremos after Sara Ann Raymond, a 1960s radical and the daughter of a right-wing U.S. presidential candidate, missing for a decade.
Uneasy Lies (1990), which the Globe and Mail called “excellent” and “highly entertaining,” casts Keremos as head of security at a condominium where an environmental activist’s body turns up.
The Butterfly Effect (1994) sends Keremos to Japan on what starts as a routine assignment and becomes a case spanning the Far East, Europe, and North America.
White Noise (1997), the last of the six Keremos novels, brings a former client from Hong Kong to Vancouver seeking Keremos’s help.
Zaremba also edited Privilege of Sex: A Century of Canadian Women, a collection of writing by Canadian women including Anne Langdon, Frances Stewart, and Anna Brownell Jameson, and published a memoir, The Broad Side: Reflections on a Long Life (2015).
Complete Bibliography
Novels (Helen Keremos series): A Reason to Kill (1978), Work for a Million (1986), Beyond Hope (1987), Uneasy Lies (1990), The Butterfly Effect (1994), White Noise (1997)
Nonfiction: Privilege of Sex: A Century of Canadian Women, editor (1972); The Broad Side: Reflections on a Long Life, memoir (2015)
Zaremba died at her home on October 8, 2025, using medical assistance in dying. She was 94. She is survived by her wife of 47 years, Ottie Lockey.
Photography from Penguin Random House Canada