So, KL Charles's Slippery Creatures wound up being a surprisingly good period erotic novel. (Yeah, I know.)
We open in Jolly Olde England not long after Armistice Day, as one Will Darling, former British soldier who fought in the trenches for most of the war is back in London having pawned most of his medals to keep going. However, an estranged uncle he managed to find did leave him a used book store, which is currently tied up in probate. Which, other than the fact the store is kind of like the better used stores, where things aren't exactly well organized, is a step up.
We get an early hook when two different sets of men enter the store at two different times demanding information promised to them. Problem being, the information is something Will has no clue about. (Of the two groups, one is the War Office, whom Will wants nothing to do with. The other is a group of Tories going under the group alias Zodiac. Whom Will also unceremoniously kicks out of the shop.) During one of these visits, the Honorable Kim Secretan comes a shopping, and he and Will hit it off.
Sort of. While they do eventually manage to get into some fairly smutty scenes, every time Will starts trusting Kim, he finds out another way Kim betrayed him. (Now at the outset, it's a bit like the movie version of Clue, where we find out The Honorable Secretan supported the Bolsheviks prior to the Great War. Then it gets into the fact that Kim is engaged to a woman, that he's tipped off the War Office, that he... well, lets just say while he isn't exactly a Bond Girl double agent, he does some rather dastardly things.
While the central mysteries are engaging, I was more sucked in by the conversations on homosexuality is 20's London. Reminded me quite a bit of a conversation in God and Monsters where James Whale makes a comment about how there are no atheists in a foxhole, but plenty of lovers. Given that Weimar Berlin in the years after this novel became a Homosexual Hangout, I kept pondering if the main characters might find time to slip off to see a certain Sally Bowles in later volumes.
While I'm sure there are historical inaccuracies, it was a fun read with characters who while not morally pure certainly made understandable gray characters.
