From Booklist
Birmingham, England, university students Neil and Matt fall out after Matt beds his ex while celebrating Labour's 1995 electoral triumph, and Neil goes cruising. He picks up some damn rough trade, and his movie-star face gets slashed. As scarred psychologically as physically, Neil drops his doctoral studies, gives up political activism, leaves Matt, and adopts an alter ego named Jason. He goes in search of his assailant, thinking he just wants to come to an understanding, but he is really losing his soul as he trolls Birmingham's gay pubs. Finally, three years after the attack, he gets solid information about the slasher when he--not the slasher--is taken in for murder. By then, Neil is no longer Jason, thanks to a week's role-playing with an S & M guy, and he has a new lover, sort of. Neil's salvation via sexual healing is hard to swallow, but Lane's gay
roman noir otherwise possesses immense authority, steeped as it is in those staples of decadent youth--leftist politics, rock, booze, drugs, and edgy sex.
Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
'The Blue Mask takes an intensely personal slant on the big themes of love, identity and retribution, and turns them into something that is both moving and original... the controlled prose honours the complexities of Neil's struggle to differentiate between what he is and what has been done to him'
New Statesman
