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Selby Bigge is a queer. He’s a relatively lucky one, all things considered, never caught out by the police, happy-ish with his handful of reliable lovers, and nights spent hunting the heath for willing men, gainfully employed at the bank, housed and clothed and healthy. Yes, things could be much worse for Selby, and he knows it. When he runs into Patrick on the Heath, Selby is beset by memories. Easy smiles. A stolen kiss. Drunk on the possibility of Patrick, Selby agrees to help him uncover proof of his young step-mother’s nefarious intentions. When death comes calling, both men end up caught in the middle, but things aren’t quite as they seem. With the police tying loose ends into neat bows, Selby is the only one trying to unpick the twisted mess of thread at centre of the case, can Selby find the truth, without revealing his own secretes? Will he work his way into Patrick’s heart? And, when love like his is criminal, can Selby risk falling?

A Queer Case was an unusual kind of novel. I am forever in pursuit of the viscerally human. It is a quality you rarely find in books, because a moment of (let’s be honest) gross, simply put, un-tip-toed-around bodily reality can undermine scenes of emotional import, it is distracting, sudden, like a jump scare. In A Queer Case, Holtom does not shy away from these opportunities for real, simply stated, linguistically stark human moments – the words he chooses, on more than one occasion, to describe body parts, make that clear. At the same time, he is a lover of the quip. High speed, almost Wildean, banter and classical allusions abound. There is a repetition of phrases which almost begins to feel like a bit, bringing the reader into an in joke, but which does not always feel purposeful, and sometimes blurs the line of speaker and spoken to.

Holtom has real strength, and he also has some weaknesses, but as a whole this is a deeply readable, amusing, emotive novel which concerns itself with the reality of queerness at a time when such love was criminalised. I look forward to joining Selby Bigge again, I anticipate wonderful, slightly madcap mysteries, and if I’m lucky, an eventual love interest. 3.5 stars.