Reading: Dirty Boy

DIRTY BOY is the story of the strange and alarming case of the Hardmoor Gimp. To some, this notorious nightcreeper is no more than a merry prankster, but to others, he’s a dangerous freak or even an entity from the occult past back to claim what it once was promised.

Lovecraft, Aickman and Kurt Vonnegut jostle in this grotesque English netherworld. Alive with black comedy, formal invention and sheer horror, Dirty Boy is a dark romp where Night of the Demon meets Scarfolk.

You are now reading DIRTY BOY, the manuscript you just found stashed inside a chest freezer in the burnt-out sex dungeon.

When the Hardmoor Gimp returns after a year’s absence, this time jumping out at shy and straight-laced Emily Quy, the town explodes in a storm of speculation that intensifies when the Gimp goes on to stalk Emily, a woman not yet reconciled to the recent disappearance of her fiancé. When the Gimp appears to kidnap Emily, Hardmoor detectives Herbie and Linh interview Emily’s lodger, Amira, a young woman who has recently developed a new, outrageous personality, and Amira’s sort-of-boyfriend, Jaap Visser, a Dutch roofer whose missing boss is one of several compelling Gimp suspects. A storm of conspiracy, occult scaremongering, rumours of medieval curses, intemperate online feuding, ranting and raving erupts when Emily’s clothes are found at Lake Mott, a place of black legend. All of Hardmoor is then swept up in the quest to find Emily and unmask the Gimp, especially you, you being someone who may or may not have found yourself far too involved in and stirred up by the strange and alarming case of the Hardmoor Gimp. Perhaps, after all, your soul is its object of desire, it is you that it wants.

‘This is a staggering work, and I am finding it difficult to believe that I just read a story quite like this one, almost as if it has sent me mad.’  Des Lewis, The Gesalt-Real Time Review of Books.

Trade enquiries: contact John Baker at BLM.