Disorderly Men

A Novel

By: Edward Cahill

Narrated by: Eric Fox

Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

ONE OF QUEER FORTY'S BEST PRIDE READS FOR SUMMER 2023!

Three gay men in pre-Stonewall New York City find their fates thrown together in the police raid of a Village bar.

Roger Moorhouse is a Wall Street banker and Westchester family man with a preciously guarded secret. As the shouting begins and flashlights blaze in his face, the life he’s carefully curated over the years―a fancy new office overlooking lower Broadway, a house in Beechmont Woods, his wife and children―is about to come crashing down around him.

Columbia literature professor Julian Prince lives a comparatively uncloseted life when he finds his first committed relationship tested to its limits. How could he explain to Gus, a fearless young artist, that he couldn’t stay with him that weekend because the woman who was still technically Julian’s fiancée would be visiting? But when Gus is struck unconscious by a police baton, Julian comes out of hiding to protect him, even if exposure means losing everything.

For Danny Duffy, an Irish kid from the Bronx with a sassy mouth and a diverse group of friends, the raid is a galvanizing, Spartacus moment. Danny doesn’t have too much left to lose; his family has just disowned him. But once his name appears in the newspaper, he’ll be fired from his job at Sloan’s Supermarket, where he’s risen to assistant manager of produce, and begin a journey that veers between political enlightenment and violent revenge.

The three men find themselves in a police wagon together, their hidden lives threatened to be revealed to the world. Blackmail, a private investigator, Gus’s disappearance, and Danny’s quest for retribution propel Disorderly Men to its piercing conclusion, as each man meets the boundaries of his own fear, love, and shame. The stakes for each are different, but all of them confront a fundamental question: How much happiness is he allowed to have . . . and what share of it will he lay claim to?

©2023 Edward Cahill (P)2023 Vibrance Press

Critic reviews

In New York City half a dozen years before Stonewall, gay men knew who they loved but not yet who they were. Cahill brings their world to life in a big-hearted novel of existential suspense. A closeted banker fences with a blackmailer, an English professor searches for a brutalized lover, and a grocery store manager loses his job and his family, and the reader turns the pages faster and faster to find out not just whether these men make it but also how gays became people of integrity at a time when shame was so deeply nested in laws, institutions, and their own psyches. Cahill paints on a grand canvas the internal, individual revolutions that came before the historic one.―Caleb Crain, author of Overthrow and Necessary Errors

What a wonderous world Cahill has created full of pathos and driven by memorable characters and a divinely complex plot. Beyond the historical realities of post-war America, the novel―in extravagant and seductive prose―explores the interior lives of gay men eager for pleasure and desperate to push beyond their own perpetual suffering. Disorderly Men is an absolute triumph.―Amber Dermont, author of The Starboard Sea

A teeming multitude of characters and places, Disorderly Men honors the victims of a police raid on a gay bar by showing us their imperfections, their carnality, and their terrible compromises. Mid-century New York has never been so frightening or so beautiful.―Benjamin Nugent, author of Fraternity

A Sneailky Relatable Book!

Disorderly Men by Edward Cahill was a lovely experience. Posting a simple external conflict that propels the true story of deep internal conflict of three men.

These characters and situations at their core are relatable. Like all good characterizations, I found myself looking past the details to the core emotions and the universal human sufferings in the novel. Chapter 28 is just an absolutely lovely, cloudy resolution to my favorite character's story.

I can't write a review of this novel without talking about the importance of the topic at large. As the world grows more accepting of different sexualities, it's necessary to remember where the types of events that got us there, and this novel highlights treatment that, admittedly, I had never thought about.

All in all a strong story with great characters and a narration that blends it all nicely. Pick it up.