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THE DISCRETION OF DOMINICK AYRES by Matthew Vaughan

THE DISCRETION OF DOMINICK AYRES

By

Pub Date: July 29th, 1976
Publisher: Atlantic/Little, Brown

Victoriana, with just a pinprick of blood and a dash of paprika, this fastens once again on its elegant decadence as well as this season's other fashionable revival, the revenant from Transylvania. Dominick Ayres, a young-old Etonian living the life of an austere anchorite in London--save for his attachment to a girl, Mary, hitherto of the streets--is also interested in crime. Thus when a number of young men, covered with welts, are fetched out of the Thames, Dominick rightly suspects the homosexual aspects of the case, the implication of a Hungarian count, Sandor, and Robert, the boy who became his all-too-avid pupil after learning the elements of Euclid and the birch rod at school. Sandor, having made his confession to Dominick, promptly proceeds to take Mary to Transylvania where Dominick travels to retrieve her before returning to impose a well-deserved fate on Robert. Vaughan (Chalky, 1975) has a pleasant sense of punctilio although discretion is not always the better part of. . . he barely insinuates his way past inattention.