Uninvited

by Richard House

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1852424389
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.5" x 4.8"

Customer Reviews

Gay cycle courier finds love and trouble in London

Uninvited is an interesting story about a young lad, Ian Procter, who follows his straight friend to London, inviting himself to stay. His problems include eviction from is accommodation and being sacked from his rent collecting job. He needs to find work and eventually through a causal meeting with a young guy named Peter and up as a cycle courier. He falls in love with fellow cyclists Peter, and all goes very well, until dubious past activities catch up with him and trouble ensues. A fascinating story that captures well the slightly seedy aspect of a young lad struggling to keep his head above water in London; and the somewhat questionable employment activities of Ian's flat mate. Uninvited combines a mystery with a love story, an enjoyable if inconclusive read.

A New Classic

If you liked BRUISER you'll like this book even more, because despite everything I think Richard House is an Englishman at heart, and the descriptions of Chicagoland crime in BRUISER always seemed a little false, if wonderfully so, like Michael Powell talking about America. In THE UNINVITED he is on his own home turf and the advantage is decidedly his. That said, naming his hero "Procter" made me think all the way through the book that he, Procter, should have been a proctologist, but insetad he has one of the world's ghastliest and seediest occupations, rent boy, that is, one who collects rent, and then when that falls through, he takes up the more romantic job of bike messenger. It's still seedy, but as House describes it, it's wonderfully sexy and makes a man forget his troubles, in Procter's case a withered sort of arm--really an affliction out of Nathaniel Hawthorne--an affliction of the soul, symbolically transmuted to his body. It wouldn't be Richard House without a strong gay sex plot, and here it is again, as Ian Procter falls for a fellow biker called Peter. The two of them have at it as though the Wolfenden Act was just signed on Tuesday. Born in Cyprus, House has a sensual languour and challenge that escapes many of his UK colleagues, and when Iam's friend Malcom winds up dead, his body at the bottom of a staircase, readers with long memories may call up to mind the Gothic splendors of the old Paramount ghost classic THE UNINVITED (1944) in which swift deaths were dealt out as impartially as Fate. House's book is a splendid addition to the bookshelf of crime, fear, and the f--kedupness of things in general.