I've been having another look through the Ruth Galloway books for references to Janet Meadows.
Janet first appears in Book 4, which was published in 2011.
Here is Ruth's first encounter with Janet:
As soon as Ruth meets Janet Meadows she realises why Cathbad said that she was the perfect person to ask about Bishop Augustine. Janet, a tall elegant woman in black, is clearly a male to female transsexual. She tells Ruth as much, as soon they sit down in the refectory, a striking modern building built next to the medieval cathedral. ‘Think it’s best to get this out of the way. I used to be Jan Tomaschewski. I published quite a lot under that name. Five years ago I became Janet. It’s better to say so straight away, otherwise you’ll be thinking to yourself “Isn’t she tall? Hasn’t she got big hands?” I used to be a man. End of story.’
Janet appears again in Book 6 (published in 2014) and Book 8 (published 2016), which contains this paragraph:
Cathbad is interested by the mention of Janet’s son, Tom. He knows that Janet doesn’t see Tom, who is now grown up, also that Janet (whose name was once Jan) is not Tom’s mother, but his biological father. Janet is open about her gender realignment surgery, but rarely mentions her old life.
No appearances in Books 9 through 13, but Janet seems to feature quite heavily in Book 14, which was published in 2022 and which I haven't read yet. I only did a word search on the Kindle book but didn't want to look too closely in case of spoilers.
I'm quite intrigued by this, because I think the passages I've quoted from Books 4 and 8 might be considered quite problematic by some trans activists. Even though Janet is portrayed as an unambiguously good egg throughout the series, the overall message seems to be "Janet does not pass, and this does not matter." Which is something that I can in principle agree with.
And at the time books 4, 6 and 8 were published, trans issues weren't high on anyone's political agenda and no one was trying to cancel JK Rowling for saying that only women menstruate.
Perhaps for this reason, it reads like a well meaning and natural portrayal of a trans person as a minor character. I am imagining that perhaps Elly Griffiths has a trans friend or met a lovely trans person who served as inspiration for the character of Janet.
Of course, Janet is a character in a book series, not a real person. And the advantage of being a character as opposed to a real person is that there will never be any awkward moment in Janet and Ruth's acquaintance where Janet pops into the ladies' loos and Ruth thinks, "Hmm, really?", or Ruth is fine with it but other women in there are visibly uncomfortable. Because characters in books don't ever need to pee unless the author decides that them needing to pee is relevant to the plot in some way. So the subject can be neatly avoided in a way that it can't in real life.
Several people I used to know have transitioned since I last saw them. One of them was on my university course and has been married for nearly 20 years and has two children. The marriage still seems to be going strong. But now the person I formerly knew as Stuart now goes by Susie wears bras and skirts and nail varnish. Susie and I sometimes like each other's posts on Facebook. I'm sure that if I met Susie again now I'd behave much in the same way that Ruth does towards Janet. But if Susie used the women's toilets while we were together I'd feel horribly conflicted. Because I wouldn't want to start a debate with an actual trans person about where they should be allowed to pee, and at the same time I would feel that by saying nothing I was letting down all the women and girls who need single sex spaces. This is the kind of conflict that could arise in real life, that Ruth will never be faced with in the books.
Of course, if Elly Griffiths wanted to shoehorn in some casual trans activism, she could have chosen to include a moment where Ruth and Janet both pop to the ladies' loos together and encounter a humourless old bag who demands to know what a man is doing in her toilets, and gentle Janet feels humiliated until courageous Ruth sticks up for her.
I'll be interested to see if the references to Janet are any more political in Book 14 than they have been up to now, or whether it will continue to be a fairly uncomplicated portrayal of a pleasant middle aged historian who happens to be transgender.
Personally, if I were Elly Griffiths, enjoying a successful writing career in the current political climate, I would be cautiously congratulating myself on having made a fairly inoffensive attempt at trans inclusion before the topic really became a political hot potato, and not touching it again with a bargepole.