What I'm reading: Gays in High Places

Adam MacQueen: BENEATH THE STREETS

It’s the winter of 1976. Tom Wildeblood, a 20-year-old rent-boy, accidentally becomes a private eye following the murder of another youngster from the Piccadilly arcade where punters find their prey. The trail rapidly leads to Gays in High Places, notably to the Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe. In this ‘What If’ version of real events, amateur hitmen have murdered Thorpe's toyboy Norman Scott and are now looking for our inept hero and his boyfriend.

With Tom Driberg, Harold Wilson and Marcia Falkender in its cast, Beneath the Streets is an uneven mix of the mighty and the mundane. Tom’s estranged mum and dad in Reading are about as mundane as you can get. In Downing Street, Wilson is a fading force, over-reliant on Falkender, a PA with too much power. We are reminded that people in high places frequently have feet of clay – in Jeremy Thorpe’s case, very muddy clay. And the story ends with a chilling hint of other shocking scandals that, in 1976, were still under the radar.