Crab Bait: A Gay Mystery

by Joseph Brennan

Overview

"Brennan's idiosyncratic prose is fascinatingly textured" - Publishers Weekly

"A series of grisly murders disrupts Victorian London's covert gay scene in Brennan's historical thriller" (Kirkus Reviews), stirring an obsessive hunt for clues and culprits in this "rich, dark mystery" (Kirkus Reviews) from the Lambda Literary Award-nominated author of LOOSE LIPS.

The year is 1888, it's Ripper murders in the capital as the New World flaunts a Gilded Age. In London, best men seek solace in the gentlemen's clubs, away places catering to their every interest.

Sizar's is a secret one, a new-club breed that lures athletic workhouse lads with the bait of a better life. But when a pledge gets dead-snagged under West Pier, a Scotland Yard detective hunts for clues.

Scandals wash in, bodies mount, boys clash in jealous pursuit, death keeps things fresh and gone ones haunt as five men tell the tale of the curious case of the beautiful creature under the pier.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780645555332
Publisher:	Hard Crossing Press
Publication date:	11/23/2023
Pages:	276
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.81(d)

About the Author

Joseph Brennan, PhD was a Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Romance and Erotica for his debut novel Loose Lips: A Gay Sea Odyssey. This is his second novel. Discover more at josephbrennan.com

Editorial Reviews

2023-10-19
A series of grisly murders disrupts Victorian London’s covert gay scene in Brennan’s historical thriller.

In 1888, the city of London is abuzz over the sensational murders of Jack the Ripper in the East End, but over on the West End—in a neighborhood known as “Clubland” for its concentration of gentleman’s clubs—another murderer is at work. The most infamous of the clubs is Sizar’s, a place where boys from poor backgrounds can rise in the world so long as they’re willing to “bend.” Former Navy man Stewart Marsh sorts boys for Sizar’s; when he can, he sneaks down to Brighton to go for a run on the beach. It is here, beneath a pier, that he finds an unwelcome sight: “Snagged in the pooled crevice where sand had been drawn away by the tide lay a young man. He felt able to adjudicate the mound’s youthfulness by the roundness of boyish bulk, having refereed many a wrestling match in the scouting for Sizar’s.” The body belongs to an infamous pimp and blackmailer known as the Pipe, a young man who many might have wished dead. But who actually did the deed? As Scotland Yard Detective Oscar Glass gets to the bottom of the crime, bodies continue to pile up, and the evidence seems to point right to the heart of Sizar’s itself. Brennan has constructed an immersive puzzle, one that delights in shattering Victorian facades of class and propriety with sex and blood. Unfortunately, the author’s baroque prose weighs the story down like an anchor: “White and soft was the fall from London Bridge into the Thames,” opens one chapter; “Painless and warm, too. Death was, truly, as the evangelical preachers promised it to be: a sweet relief. Instead of the mucky freeze of the black Thames at midnight, impact was straight into the clouds.” Those who can weather the mannered prose will be treated to a fascinating look into the strange, lost world gentleman’s clubs and the young men ensnared in their customs.

A rich, dark mystery set in repressed 19th-century London.

Kirkus Reviews

"Brennan has constructed an immersive puzzle, one that delights in shattering Victorian facades of class and propriety with sex and blood. ... a fascinating look into the strange, lost world [of] gentleman's clubs and the young men ensnared in their customs.

A rich, dark mystery set in repressed 19th-century London." - Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher