Can there be a righteous murder? What is the perfect crime? At what point is revenge against homophobia justified? Set in Wellington during World War I and the 1918 Spanish Flu, Pansies' Revenge explores these questions.

The Te Aro Book Group is reading Crime and Punishment and becomes involved in what crime and punishment really means to queer men and lesbians, pacifists and free-thinkers in a time of war and contagion. Two pro-war evangelists and virulent homophobes disappear off the streets of Wellington. For months they have been publicly vilifying "pansies".

Pansies' Revenge probes the soul and passion of a war weary city gripped by fear and highlights homophobia, and its resistance, in New Zealand at the time. Romance, love, revenge, women's rights, pacifism, anti-intellectualism, sex, and gender – the novel jumps into all the issues and shows that a hundred years later we may not have changed as much as we think we have.

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