Bright, ambitious, and handsome, Ross Obrenstedt is a highflier in the fashionable field of queer studies, flourishing amid the backstabbing and petty intrigues of academia. Having just taken a prestigious university position in Los Angeles, he has been appointed to oversee the collection of papers and works of Damon Von Slyke, leading light of the gay literary salon known as the Purple Circle Sorting through the papers, Ross stumbles across a "lost" work by an unknown author. His quest to identify the mystery writer and achieve the glory of scholastic tenure unveils the lives and wild times of a group of writers who in the 1970s and 1980s broke new ground in the creation of a gay literary sensibility. As his search uncovers increasingly bizarre facts about the Purple Circle members, Ross soon finds himself the target of menacing attempts to derail his investigation.

But the dark truth contained within this Lambda Literary Award-nominated novel is even more startling. With biting wit and a lush sense of place and character, Felice Picano's daring book is at once a stylish mystery, a comical roman a clef, and a wicked send-up of the new lovry Tower.