Slippery Creatures

Slippery Creatures is K. J. Charles's 1920s adventure novel, published in 2020 and the opening book of the Will Darling Adventures. Will Darling survived the trenches and came back with a few scars, a lot of medals and no idea what to do with himself. Inheriting his uncle's chaotic second-hand bookshop looks like a reprieve — until strange visitors start turning up with threats. First a criminal gang, then the War Office, each insisting Will hand over information he knows nothing about.

With nobody to turn to, Will accepts the help of Kim Secretan: charming, cultured, unsettlingly attractive, and evasive about almost everything. As the two of them chase answers and stay a step ahead of the people hunting Will, desire builds alongside the danger — and then Will learns the truth about Kim's identity, his past and what he actually wants. Betrayed and furious, Will wants nothing more to do with him, but the knowledge Will is carrying could cost thousands of lives, and Kim is the only person who can help him survive it.

Charles writes the book as an affectionate homage to interwar pulp thrillers — bookshops and blackmail, secret documents and dastardly villains — with the period's queer lives placed at the centre rather than at the edges. It is followed by The Sugared Game and Subtle Blood.