It is 1715, and young Thomas True has managed to escape from his parent’s home, arriving in London, where he takes up residence with his uncle, a candlemaker to whom he becomes apprenticed. But that’s hardly the story. Eighteenth-century London was home to a flourishing, if risky, gay subculture, a world that seduces Thomas and that was centered around the molly houses. “Molly was a slur used for effeminate, homosexual men and the term was adopted to describe the clubs, taverns…where they met up in secret”, according to The British Newspaper Archives. And although the houses were called mollies, they attracted a range of men, from workers to aristocrats. It was a world where Thomas felt a sense of belonging, made all the more immediate with his discovery of beefy carpenter Gabriel Griffin (AKA Lotty), the doorman at Mother Clap’s Molly House. But when a young molly is found murdered, Gabriel goes in search of the rat who is exposing the men to the judicial system. Could it be someone he is close to? This book is that rare thing: both a strong historical novel that drops you into a richly rendered early 18th century and a powerful mystery that remains at the center of the book.
