The Judas Kiss — David Butler

When Bluebottle runs away from a religious institution to live on the streets of Dublin, he is taken in by Malcolm, an ageing sensualist with a penchant for younger boys. But lust soon turns into full-blown sexual obsession. There follows the first of a series of increasingly violent encounters which lead relentlessly to disfigurement and bloody murder. The Judas Kiss is dark and moody. But the tale is relieved throughout not only by a pervasive black humor, but by the emergence of love in all its various guises. ""Several darkly comic characters share narrative duty in this affecting, tightly controlled story that's never dull.""-Publishers Weekly March 25, 2013