ICELIGHT

In the austere post-war winter of 1947 reactionary elements of British Intelligence, swayed by their American counterparts, started a witch-hunt for homosexuals in vulnerable occupations such as espionage and nuclear physics.

Collateral damage threatens exposure and ruin for the great and gay in corridors of power so a counter action is set up headed by a mannered maverick, Peter Cotton, assisted by an unusually intelligent sergeant in the Special Branch. Between them a finely meshed team have recourse to a diverse tangle of rogues whom they cajole, suborn and blackmail into collusion.

The taut style compliments the characters, dialogue and a plot extraordinarily ramified but basically simple. Cotton uses strategy and tactics that are permissible in the context (marginally clean except in self-defence) against a vicious enemy employing members of a Glasgow razor gang as mercenaries.

At one time this novel exposing corruption in high and secret places would have been regarded as sedition. In a season of bad news, of graft, rendition and torture conducted implicitly on our behalf, Icelight carries significance in every timely phrase.