Tainted Love by T.S. Hunter is out now from Red Dog Press and is a new addition from an up and coming independent publisher.
Set in the mid-1980s, it follows the tale of young Joe; a young homosexual who has come to the big city to meet his friend Chris who has offered him a job and a pathway to come out to the world in these difficult socio-cultural times when homosexuality is still frowned upon.
We meet Joe at a gay club, dancing and having fun. Chris is with him and whilst going to the bathroom, he sees Chris in an altercation. Joe shies away, even when Chris tells him he has to leave. Very later that night/early morning, Joe returns to Chris' flat where he is staying over and finds Chris' body in the hallway beaten and bloodied, dead at the scene.
Joe connects with Chris' room-mate, Russell an ex-police officer - unceremoniously removed from the force after a bust exposed his own homosexuality - and they decide to solve the case of Chris' killer by doing the leg work around Soho themselves; as the prejudiced police see Chris' murder as another rent boy murder gone wrong.
The book is only 125 pages long, but it is written in a real whirling wind of detail and breeziness by Hunter. This promises to be a serious of Soho Noir as he has christened it; perhaps Russell and Joe will be the 'Cagney and Lacey' of the coming years in publication circles. However, there is a lot to be said for this type of novel - short, sharp, easy to follow with convincing characters in a nostalgic age which is easy to place in a time and place as the AIDS epidemic starts to take hold.
Hunter has expertly crafted a group of characters you would like to return to again and again. The fact that it involves gay characters is neither here nor there, this is a story well told and gratefully received.
Tainted Love is out from Red Dog Press on April 18th, I shall be appearing in the book blog tour on April 15th.
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