Crab Bait by Joseph Brennan

"Brennan's idiosyncratic prose is fascinatingly textured" - Publishers Weekly
"A series of grisly murders disrupts Victorian London's covert gay scene in Brennan's historical thriller" (Kirkus Reviews), stirring an obsessive hunt for clues and culprits in this "rich, dark mystery" (Kirkus Reviews) from the Lambda Literary Award-nominated author of LOOSE LIPS.
The year is 1888, it's Ripper murders in the capital as the New World flaunts a Gilded Age. In London, best men seek solace in the gentlemen's clubs, away places catering to their every interest.
Sizar's is a secret one, a new-club breed that lures athletic workhouse lads with the bait of a better life. But when a pledge gets dead-snagged under West Pier, a Scotland Yard detective hunts for clues.
Scandals wash in, bodies mount, boys clash in jealous pursuit, death keeps things fresh and gone ones haunt as five men tell the tale of the curious case of the beautiful creature under the pier.