A Reason to Kill by Eve Zaremba

Lots of 18-year-olds disappear but in the case of Martin Millwell, a routine missing person case turns into a nightmare. Helen Keremos is hired by Martin’s father to find the boy but gets no cooperation from Martin’s mother, her lover or his friends. Why the coverup? Takes Keremos, a lesbian detective, to figure it out and solve the case.
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“Eve Zaremba’s first mystery surely represents one of the more unusual experiments with the female hard-boiled private-eye. First of all her hero, Helen Keremos is a Canadian, second she is a lesbian…

The plot…has several twists to deliver before it’s unusual conclusion-one that turns the classic reenactment of the crime into a exercise in collective decision making…The politics of Zaremba’s novel, sexual and otherwise, is clearly recognizable as part of the Seventies.”

—1001 Midnights, The Aficionado’s Guide to Mystery and Detective Fiction