IF there was any justice in the world, American novelist Laura Sharrow, who writes under the name L S Sharrow, would be a best-selling author. Her fast-paced murder mysteries, featuring husband and wife private detectives Gina Slotkin and Paul Loya, and written mainly in dialogue, are real page-turners. Even though they are about murders, there are touches of throwaway humour throughout, and they are also short, unlike some of the impenetrable doorstopper thrillers which unaccountably rise through the best-seller lists.
With all this going for them, why does Sharrow have to publish her novels independently, under the radar so to speak?
It’s because of the themes, which tackle anti-Semitism, trans men and women, homeopathic remedies and, slipping down very easily, a history of Israel. Sharrow is Jewish and so are many of her characters. But being Jewish is not the main reason she can’t get published by traditional outlets: after all, many world-class authors are, and have been, Jewish.
No, she is cancelled or ignored thanks to going against the current woke grain with just about everything she writes. For instance, two of her recent novels, Moxie and Hot Town, tackle the forced transition of children and teenagers. In Hot Town, a young Jewish transman is trying to detransition and become a girl again after being prescribed puberty blockers and undergoing a double mastectomy. Of course, the detransition will work only up to a point, as much irreversible damage has already been done. The male voice, for instance, brought about by cross-sex hormones, will remain all her life.
This character was put on to puberty blockers at 13, when she realised she was lesbian and attracted to other girls. Told by doctors and psychiatrists that she was trans, she understood too late that she was not, after all, ‘trapped in the wrong body’.
Sharrow says, ‘In these two novels, I deal with the medicalisation of children, with anti-Semitism as a backdrop. But I have discovered to my cost that it is impossible to get traditionally published with anything that criticises trans treatments.
‘I also found that Amazon have been removing authors they regard as transphobic. I had a short story accepted by a mainstream publisher but when they learned of my opposition to medicalising gay and lesbian youngsters, they pulled the story. Since then I came to understand that most publishers will not go near an author who is opposed to children transitioning. Once I realised that, I decided to publish independently with my first and then second novel.’
She decided after those two novels to avoid writing any more about trans matters as they were just too unacceptable in the present climate. Her third novel, Savage, in which the detectives investigate the murder of an elderly Jewish woman, is more directly about anti-Semitism and is set in Paris just after the Charlie Hebdo shootings.
The story here is that on January 7, 2015, two Algerian Muslim brothers killed 12 people working on the satirical magazine, and injured 11 others, for printing a caricature of the prophet Muhammad. Two days later, a kosher supermarket was targeted on a Jewish holy day.
Sharrow does not pull any punches, and one of her characters in Savage says that Gaza schoolteachers tell their pupils that Israelis drink the blood of Muslim babies. A Muslim taxi driver is very rude to Gina Slotkin, the Jewish detective, telling her that he will not tolerate any insolence from women.
But this theme is not the only one to offend today’s mainstream publishing business. In the same novel, homeopathic remedies are favourably featured. This undoubtedly upsets Big Pharma, who have for a long time denounced homeopathy as quackery and tried their level best to get it outlawed.
Sharrow, who suffers from ME, says, ‘I have been immeasurably helped by homeopathic remedies when conventional medicine could do nothing. My son, now 49, had a persistent ear infection cured by homeopathy when orthodox medicine failed him. Yes, there are charlatans in homeopathy as there are in all branches of medicine, but I know from my own experience that it can, and often does, work.’
As one might guess, Sharrow is also vehemently opposed to the mRNA jab, and is firmly with Robert F Kennedy Jr on the forced vaccination of babies and children. On mRNA vaccinations and the matter of children transitioning, she says: ‘They are both methods and technologies employed by Big Pharma and, in the case of transitioning kids, surgeries as well. If the idea, the plan, behind the jab was to depopulate, then an easy way into starting the process would have been through medicalising confused kids, kids with autism and gay and lesbian teenagers.’
She adds: ‘At first I thought it was all about Big Pharma profits, but now I think it’s much more sinister. Young people who transition are automatically rendered sterile. They also become lifelong medical patients. Massive numbers of young people have been made infertile through the mRNA jab. And they’re beginning to drop like flies.’
Although Sharrow’s novels deal with controversial themes and murders most foul, they are a light, sometimes comic, read and among the light relief is the investigative journalist Nigel Harrison, an amusing and affectionate depiction of the late writer Christopher Hitchens. He himself was Jewish, something he learned only at the age of 38 after his mother committed suicide.
Throughout history, it has been the subversive voices in the wilderness that have eventually led to the truth coming out, and Sharrow’s gift for plot and witty dialogue constitute the latest brave salvos against the forces of darkness which threaten to engulf us.
L S Sharrow’s Gina Slotkin murder mysteries Moxie and Hot Town are available on Amazon on Kindle and as e-books, and Savage will be available after March 27.