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by Gareth Carter (Author)
What if international espionage were driven by chaos instead of control?
A Hilarious LGBTQ+ Spy Adventure Packed with Global Chaos, Satire, and Shameless Excess
Don Kee Dong is on the trail of the elusive Phillip Mihol-but what begins as a routine pursuit quickly spirals into something far stranger.
The chase leads to Budapest, where a flamboyant secret society known only as "HO" operates in the shadows. Between eccentric power players, shifting alliances, and dangerously tempting distractions, Dong is pulled into a world where nothing is quite what it seems-and no one can be trusted.
The Misadventures of Don Kee Dong & Phillip Mihol is a bold, irreverent send-up of the spy genre-blending international intrigue with sharp satire, outrageous humor, and unapologetically explicit twists.
This isn't a polished, by-the-book thriller.
It's a chaotic, boundary-pushing queer adventure packed with excess, absurdity, and global intrigue.
Perfect for readers who enjoy:
- LGBTQ+ fiction with humor and bite
- Spy stories that don't take themselves seriously
- Satire that pushes limits-and then ignores them
"An over-the-top gay...sendup of the secret-agent genre...with an absurd premise and pulpy fight scenes."
- Kirkus Reviews
Meant for mature audiences.
Unabridged Kirkus Review:
Carter offers an over-the-top gay...sendup of the secret-agent genre.
In a novel full of bawdily named characters, including Dutch operative Phillip Mihol, Bulgarian Ilov Giandik, and villainous Spanish mastermind Manuel Azramar, Vietnam-born spy Don Kee Dong sets out on a world-spanning mission to infiltrate a shadowy criminal enterprise known as HO. The espionage story is definitely secondary to the sex scenes involving the well-endowed hero, which are nonstop-and that's the point, as Carter himself explains in an author's note, in which he says that the novel is intended as a response to the antigay bias he experienced as a working librarian; he calls his book a "sexy adventure" that's "all pure globetrotting queer joy!" But try as he might to simply be as provocative as an author could possibly hope to be, Carter succeeds in infusing the sexcapades with some substantive weight as well. Sure, it's a world of wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling sex, but that's not all it is; the book also shows a clear renunciation and rebuke of sexual assault amid the wildness. The narrative's tongue-in-cheek tone is so pervasive that sudden serious allusions, as when Dong is asked to reconsider HO's true nature, can be jarring: "I won't say they're all good, but during various purges such as the Inquisition and the Holocaust, HO saved countless lives," says Mihol. "HO got thousands of queers and Jews out of Nazi Germany alone, and not only their members." There's also a lot of two-fisted violence in another nod to the secret-agent genre-particularly the brutality of Ian Fleming's James Bond capers: "I went in as if to punch with my left and instead I threw dirt in his eyes with my right. I then broke his kneecap. That'll hurt, I thought. As if on cue, he screamed in pain. I punched him again in the windpipe."
...An absurd premise, pulpy fight scenes, and a few serious messages.
Subjects: LCSH: 1. Gay men-Fiction 2. Spy-Fiction. 3. Satire-Fiction. 4. Secret societies-Fiction. LCGFT: Novels.
