Right Life Left Life — S.D. Gripton

This is a novel about male homosexuality. It mostly takes place in 1962, a time when any sexual contact between men was a criminal offence and the participants could be jailed; it was a time when the police considered male homosexuals as being sub-human and treated them appallingly; it was a time when 'queer-bashing' was almost a national sport, a time during which most homosexual men chose to remain firmly in the closet. The main character of the novel is Robert Tennell, public schoolboy, war hero, and homosexual policeman who should have been prosecuting men such as himself who has lived hidden from view for almost 40 years. He would love nothing more than to openly life the Right Life with his secret live-in lover, Jonathan, but he is forced to live the Left Life as an upstanding police officer. When murders take place on his streets of the City, following a new campaign by the police to drive homosexuals from the City limits, Robert Tennell has to investigate during a time when he is suffering terribly from loneliness, from great guilt for betraying his police force, from the horrors of what he sees being done to other male homosexuals. Through it all, Robert Tennell stands tall, eventually deciding that the Right Life is the life for him. A crime novel with a difference from the imagination of S.D. Gripton