Vikram wants to renew his friendship with Gil but has a very hard time accepting the world Gil lives in.Â He is uncomfortable with the life his friend was forced to lead while he continued his comfortable life in school and university.Â Gil is cynical about Vikram’s desire to help people because in his life he hasn’t seen many people with that motivation. There is a bit of over the top serendipity in the main characters meeting.Â It is like, “I’m searching for this lost boy because it reminds me of my former best friend who went missing.Â I’ll go to this bookstore.Â Oh, look!Â There is my missing best friend.Â Imagine that!” Vikram is a lawyer who takes some pro bono cases in London’s Indian community.Â He knew Gil at school where they bonded over being the only dark-skinned people.Â He has always wondered what happened to his friend when he suddenly left school but no one would answer his questions.Â Vikram is investigating the disappearance of an Indian teen who worked as a prostitute.Â The only clue is a studio photo that the boy’s parents had.Â There is no way he could afford to have bought it.Â Vikram guesses he may have been modeling for erotic photographers and was given the formal portrait as partial payment. Gil is a bastard child of a rich family.Â When his father died, his older half-brother cut off his education and funds.Â In order to survive he was a prostitute.Â Now he runs a bookstore that sells pornography, which is illegal.

I read this book immediately after A Gentleman Never Keeps Score.Â The two fit together nicely because they share the theme of sexual abuse/exploitation of teenage boys due to poverty. And on the way, they may even learn if thereâ€™s more than just memory and old affection binding them together. Now the upright lawyer and the illicit bookseller need to work together to track down the missing youth. Not even Vikram not even if the once-beloved boy has grown into a man who makes his mouth water. Gil Lawless became a Holywell Street bookseller for his own reasons, and heâ€™s damned if heâ€™s going to apologise or listen to moralising from anyone. He doesnâ€™t expect one of them to be run by the long-lost friend whose disappearance and presumed death heâ€™s been mourning for thirteen years.

He expects to find a disgraceful array of sordid bookshops.

When crusading lawyer Vikram Pandey sets out in search of a missing youth, his investigations take him to Holywell Street, Londonâ€™s most notorious address.

Unfit to Print by K.J. Charles