Roman Ivory
A Novel
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1.0 • 1 Rating
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- $1.99
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
In Victorian England, Joseph Stapleton, 1st Viscount Barringon, has died unexpectedly, leaving his nineteen-year-old son, Robert, to inherit his title, estate, family business, and a curious collection of ancient and contemporary male erotica. Eager to discover more about his father's carefully hidden passion, Robert retraces his travels to London, Paris, and Rome, discovering, first to his dismay and then to his great relief, that he and his father are attracted to men in the same way. But then Robert goes a step too far and uncovers clues that his father - and one of his prize objets d'art - may have been involved in a grisly murder. Worse, Robert's new domineering lover, Fabrizio, may have been the murderer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Bruegmann (The Architecture of Harry Wees) makes his fiction debut with a fascinating and disturbing erotic mystery. The action kicks off with the death, in 1879, of British viscount Joseph Stapleton. His 19-year-old son, Robert, is expected to step into his father's position, but the transition of power is interrupted when a review of Joseph's assets reveals that he kept a secret house in St. John's Wood, London. Robert goes to see the home and finds it filled with sexually explicit art objects, including an ivory phallus believed to be connected to a decades-old murder that took place in Rome. The more Robert learns of his father's homosexual desires, the more he begins to question his own sexuality. He sets off to Paris, then Rome, to learn more about Joseph's life as a young art student and determine whether he was connected to the murder. In the meantime, Robert meets and falls for an art dealer named Fabrizio, who introduces him to the often-violent world of underground gay sex. Bruegmann renders the period with graceful immediacy, but the mystery plot is little more than window dressing for heaps of masochistic sex, on which reader mileage may vary. Those willing to take the plunge will be rewarded.
