RICHARD STEVENSON LIPEZ, born on this date (d: 2022); commonly known by his pen name Richard Stevenson, was an American journalist and  mystery author, most recently residing in Massachusetts. He was best known for his Donald Strachey mysteries.

Lipez was openly gay, and married his husband Joe Wheaton in 2004. He died from pancreatic cancer in March 2022, at the age of 83.

He was the author of a series of crime novels centered on an openly gay detective who, unlike the one-dimensional depictions common in the genre in the 1980s and ’90s, is not a tortured soul or a freak but a relatable character who is content with his life.

His protagonist, Donald Strachey, worked the underside of Albany, N.Y. He was named after Lytton Strachey, the early 20th-century English biographer; the name appealed to Mr. Lipez because Strachey, a gay intellectual, represented the antithesis of the stereotypical macho gumshoe.

Still, Mr. Lipez, known as Dick, respected the tough-guy tradition of the genre, and before he began writing a new book he would reread Raymond Chandler for inspiration. But Strachey is no Philip Marlowe. When his phone rings, he isn’t swilling rye from a bottle in his desk drawer or fending off dames. Rather, he’s reading The Gay Community News. Donna Summer’s disco anthems reverberate in his head. “Death Trick” takes place in 1979, before the AIDS crisis, and it includes a fair amount of carefree exuberance.

Many of Mr. Lipez’s themes, settings and plots revolve around gay issues. In “Shock to the System” (1995), Strachey goes undercover to investigate a gay conversion therapy group. “Strachey’s Folly” (1998) opens with the sleuth and his lover, Timmy, in Washington, D.C., at a display of the AIDS quilt, a vast memorial to people who have died of the disease. There, stitched into the quilt, they see the name of a man who they know is not dead.

An aficionado of detective fiction — Mr. Lipez was a freelance reviewer of mysteries for The Washington Post for three decades — he was irked that crime novels generally gave a lopsided view of gay characters, portraying them as misfits and villains who often met an unpleasant demise.

In 1968, Mr. Lipez married Hedy Harris, whom he had met in the Peace Corps, and they moved to Massachusetts, settling in the Berkshires. He became executive director of an anti-poverty agency and devoted himself to progressive causes; she became a nurse and was involved in several health and social service organizations. They divorced in 1995. She died in 2021.

Mr. Lipez and Mr. Wheaton met in 1990, when Mr. Wheaton was running a catering business and a restaurant, La Fête Chez Vous, in Stockbridge, Mass.; the eatery had previously been called the Back Room, the restaurant made famous by Arlo Guthrie’s 1967 song “Alice’s Restaurant.”

Mr. Lipez and Mr. Wheaton were among more than 70 same-sex couples who were married in towns across Massachusetts on May 17, 2004, the day the state became the first in the country to permit same-sex marriage.

Mr. Lipez wrote book reviews for Newsday in addition to The Washington Post, as well as editorials for The Berkshire Eagle and articles for Harpers, The Atlantic and Newsweek.

His first novel, “Grand Scam” (1979), which he wrote with Peter Stein and which was not part of the Strachey series, was the only one in which he used the name Lipez. Some of his Strachey novels were adapted into films for the gay cable channel Here!, but Mr. Lipez often said he was not especially happy with them.

The Strachey series is being republished by ReQueered Tales, a publisher trying to preserve the literary heritage of the L.G.B.T.Q. community. Two new books are being published posthumously: “Knock Off the Hat,” a non-Strachey crime novel about a wave of gay-bashing in 1940s Philadelphia; and his 17th Strachey novel, “Chasing Rembrandt.”