The Sugared Game

The Sugared Game is the second of KJ Charles's Will Darling Adventures, a trilogy of 1920s m/m romantic thrillers written in the spirit of Golden Age pulp fiction. It has been two months since Will Darling — a rough-and-ready soldier turned London bookseller — last saw Lord Arthur "Kim" Secretan, and he does not expect to see him again. Then a face from the past surfaces in a disreputable nightclub, Kim turns up alongside it, as shifty and unreliable and irresistible as ever, and Will is dragged back into a world of secrets, criminal conspiracies and underhand dealings.

This time the dealings are underhand even by Kim's standards, and the danger is close to home. Set in post-war Britain among nightclubs, cinemas, Bright Young Things and aristocratic circles with tensions rising along with the hemlines, the book balances espionage and mystery against a romance built on hard-won trust. Will's best friend Maisie and his new friend Phoebe are given as much room as the men at the centre of it.

Reviewers have called it a taut, high-stakes follow-up that avoids the usual middle-book drift, full of twists, murder, larceny, betrayal and a thrilling final act, with a witty, tender streak running through the whole thing. It is the middle volume of a three-book arc: the story continues from Slippery Creatures and does not resolve until Subtle Blood, so it reads best in order.