Dorothy Porter has been called an audacious poet. She has been called a sexy read. Doug Anderson described her as ‘One of our most exuberant and perceptive purveyors of passion.’ With the publication of her latest book, The Monkey’s Mask, Porter’s reputation stands firm.

The Monkey’s Mask is a lesbian crime thriller. There’s nothing new or bold about that. Women writers have been infiltrating and subverting this traditionally masculine genre for many years now and lesbian P.I.s are pretty thick on the ground (‘The dicks are dykes’ as someone once said) but the indefatigable Porter has created yet another form – a lesbian crime thriller written completely in verse. And that’s not all that’s ground-breaking about this book. It is being marketed as fiction.