The Book of Lies - Softcover

Playful, ambitious, and minutely plotted, Felice Picano's follow-up to his crossover success, Like People in History, will appeal to his increasing readership in much the same way as a box of Belgian chocolates, a self-indulgent but harmless extravagance. Ross Ohrenstedt, a resourceful and well-read young academic teaching a single summer literature course at UCLA, manages to get permission to examine and catalog the papers of Damon Von Slyke, a member of the infamous Purple Circle of gay writers active in the 1960s and 1970s (and roughly modeled on Picano's own literary group, the Violet Quill Club, which includes Andrew Holleran and Edmund White). Piecing together the various drafts of Von Slyke's many books, and trying to identify the handwriting in the margins, Ross eventually stumbles on a fascinating manuscript by an unknown writer--a man virtually erased from literary history--who seems to have been intimately connected to all the members of the Purple Circle. Picano's baroque eye for detail and his invariably rich and luscious male characters (most of whom speak in complete, highly articulate sentences that would put Gore Vidal to shame) set the sometimes silly, but no less enjoyable, tone for this well-paced academic mystery. --Regina Marler

Felice Picano, author of fifteen books, is a founding member of the legendary Violet Quill Club. A major leader of the modern gay literary movement, he lives in Los Angeles.