The Little Death

I went about this backward. I wasn't acquainted with [a:Michael Nava 306882 Michael Nava https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1456848788p2/306882.jpg] and when [b:Lay Your Sleeping Head 33790571 Lay Your Sleeping Head (The Henry Rios Novels) Michael Nava https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1483510363s/33790571.jpg 54681890] came across my radar I jumped on it and so should you. Having read that I wanted to see the difference with the predecessor and I'm happy I did. While these are the same characters you could say that they are so only in name. That book is a different beast but this is meant to be a review for this book. As a murder mystery this was very well done but that was the icing on the cake. The draw here is as I'm sure it was in 80's when it was published, that the protagonist is an unabashedly gay man. He's a professional. He's a productive member of society. Yes he falls for the mysterious stranger who comes wrapped in a bow that says trouble but what P.I. since [a:Wilkie Collins 4012 Wilkie Collins https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1192222099p2/4012.jpg] has ever gone for the plain Jane. We are firmly in California noir territory complete with powerful and secretive families, mysterious deaths, characters with obscure motives and the tendrils of danger around every corner. At the heart of it all is a tenacious P.I. in this case Henry Rios who is in fact an attorney, but finds himself ineluctably drawn to the mystery of his lover's death. A lover who had awoken him from a long lethargy of going thru the paces. Their meeting was the push to get Henry out of an existential rut. Henry quotes this poem by C. V. Cavafy in the book and it perfectly encapsulates who or what Hugh is to him: “The setting of houses, cafés, the neighborhood that I've seen and walked through years on end: I created you while I was happy, while I was sad, with so many incidents, so many details. And, for me, the whole of you is transformed into feeling.”The mystery has twists and turns and if you like [a:Raymond Chandler 1377 Raymond Chandler https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1206535318p2/1377.jpg] or [a:Dashiell Hammett 16927 Dashiell Hammett https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1287255332p2/16927.jpg] you'll like this. There is no explicit sex and I can't say I missed it. You feel it. More importantly we spend time with gay men who are going about normal lives in spite of an unforgiving and harsh society. I'm going to continue with the series because I want to see were Henry goes from here having the hindsight of now.