Monkey’s Mask

Dorothy Porter was an internationally acclaimed Australian poet, verse novelist and librettist. Her work was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, the Melbourne Prize for Literature, the Prime Minister's Literary Award and won the Adelaide Festival Award. Her verse novel, The Monkey's Mask, won The Age Poetry Book of the Year and the National Book Council Award, as well as being an international bestseller. Dorothy Porter died in 2008.

Shot through with a lively brilliance, The Monkey's Mask is a traditional verse novel told in multiple voices, which also happens to be an erotic lesbian detective romance. Like the archetypal hero of Dashiell Hammett's Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade, Porter's lesbian private eye heroine, Jill Fitzpatrick, is torn between passionate love and professional ethics