ABSTRACT
For a novel saturated in genre (the romance and its Gothic ancestor, and the crime thriller) A Case of Knives executed an impressive crossover in the literary honours of 1988, copping half the riches of the above prize for romantic fiction and the kudos of the Whitbread shortlist. The three terms of Hal's transgression — violence, class counterfeiting and pathology - are invoked in the novel's title. Rather than upending the entire premiss of the genre, homosexuality is adapted to its requirements, functioning as a plausibly modern delaying device in the romantic narrative and a psychologically coherent explanation for the conventional ambivalence of the hero. As the novel shifts between desire and disease, it is difficult to ignore the resemblance of the hero's name, 'Lucas Salik', to that of Jonas Salk — the real-life inventor of the polio vaccine, and a reported contender in the race to discover one against HIV.
