The Wrong People (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)

Set against the seedy backdrop of 1960s Tangier, The Wrong People (1967) is the story of Arnold Turner, a repressed English schoolmaster on holiday in Morocco, where he meets Ewing Baird, a wealthy American expat with a dark secret. Ewing lavishly entertains him and even provides him with a young lover, but as Arnold becomes more and more involved with Ewing he realizes only too late that he has been lured into a dangerous trap – and his only chance of escape is by helping Ewing to carry out a sinister plan.

Drawing in part on the author’s real-life efforts to expose the African sex trafficking trade, Robin Maugham’s first explicitly gay-themed novel was both a critical and a commercial success, being reprinted several times – including in the important Gay Modern Classics series – and was optioned for a film version by Sal Mineo (Rebel Without a Cause). This edition includes a new foreword by Maugham’s longtime partner William Lawrence.

‘I can only think of a handful of novelists who can play the reader like a hooked fish with comparable ingenuity and suppleness.’ – Francis King, Sunday Telegraph

‘A very well-told story, every move nicely calculated and undeniably shuddery.’ – Daily Telegraph

‘A gripping thriller. Storytelling at its best.’  – Sunday Express