Bottom Line: Don’t waste your time reading this! I absolutely fail to comprehend how such competent writers as Stephen King and Andrew Holleran could be enticed to write jacket cover blurbs for this mediocre novel. I suppose on second thought that these well-respected writers chose the wording of their respective statements so carefully that they could be seen as high praise. Well no high praise from me!
This odd work might have been clever, titillating, and absorbing in 1979 when it was first published, but it sure isn’t now. It poses several problems for the new millennium reader.
The time setting is drearily dated. I tire of books set between Stonewall and the identification of the AIDS epidemic, roughly from 1969 through 1980/81. This is the time/space of Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance, but The Lure by Felice Picano is a shard of glass compared to Dancer, a gem of excellent writing against which nearly anything would pale. Lure slides to the bottom of the scale. The images conveyed (only marginally adequately) smack of Tom of Finland’s great mainstream and soft porn air brush drawings of the period. Tom of Finland does it better!
The sexuality of the main character is confusing (not confused). He is initially a straight college professor recently widowed. He continues throughout the novel attracted to both men and women yet his persona is not bi-sexual. He seems to act in the gay world (his assignment) and performs in same sex relationships only reluctantly. Later he gets to like homosexuality. The feeling, oddly enough, is that you can learn to be gay. I don’t think even in 1980 that was a viable thesis.
The New York City gay community is poorly portrayed compared to Dancer where the City itself was a character. The descriptions read more like storyboard summaries for an ad campaign. Some scenes were indeed meaningful to me, but only because I was living in the City at the time and know the locales and recall the sights, smells, and ambiance described. I doubt if the general reader would get all fuzzy feeling and nostalgic.
The plot is childishly convoluted. This is allegedly a “masterful psychological thriller.” Not! At best the plot is a sophomoric attempt at that genre. There is, however, a passing plot connection with Stephen King’s early book Firestarter. King did it well; Picano did not.
The Lure does capture the general feeling of the Vietnam era national mood. That was a time when young intelligent New Yorkers were seriously considering moving temporarily to Canada. There was a palpable feeling of mistrust of all institutions, but especially the federal government, the churches and the New York City police. That tone does effectively come through as the plot works itself out. Unfortunately, while the ambiance seems authentic it also seems really silly from today’s vantage point.
A final comment: In the introduction by the author, he compares his work to the movie Cruising with Al Pacino. That movie was not great, but it was better than The Lure.
Read something else!