Goldenboy and How Town, Two by Michael Nava

"You have a call."

Opening to

Goldenboy

by Michael Nava

Henry Rios, attorney for the defense, has a habit of taking hopeless cases, cases with defendants who are certainly guilty.  He takes these cases as favors for a friend or for his sister, intent to provide the best representation his clients can hope for.  It's his dedication to this principal, that everyone deserves representation no matter how guilty they look or how guilty they actually are, that leads him to fight for his clients until the end, when he finds them innocent, at least innocent of the crimes they are charged with.

In Goldenboy, Henry Rios has a young client who was found in a locked room with the murdered victim, the murder weapon, a knife, in his hand.  That the accused claims that he can remember going down into the basement room and waking up with the bloody knife in his hand, but that he has no memory of what happened in between or of committing the crime at all.  Everyone, the police, the accused's friends and co-workers, even Henry Rios, thinks he did it--no one else possibly could have-- and that once he gets his memory back they'll be able to figure out his motive.

No one suspects that he can't remember the murder because he didn't do it.

In How Town, Henry Rios goes back to his home town in rural California, to represent the husband of his sister's friend.  The accused is an admitted pedophile, the victim a known child pornographer who may have been involved in a blackmail scheme or possibly child trafficking.  While no one would call the defendant 'innocent',  Henry Rios believes that he did not commit this murder.  To many details just don't add up.  And it's Henry's belief that no one should be punished for a crime they did not commit, no matter how horrible a person he may be.

The road to my sister's house snaked through

 the hills above Oakland, revealing at each

 curve a brief view of the bay in the glitter of

 the summer morning.

Opening to

How Town

by Michael Nava

In my review of the first Henry Rios novel, The Litle Death, I commented on how surprised I was to find no mention of AIDS in a mystery with a gay detective written in the mid-1980's.  I imagine the circumstances of taking a book to print simply put The Little Death on paper before AIDS became the topic of every conversation at least in the Gay community in California, because it's all over the place in both Goldenboy and How Town.  AIDS hits home for Henry Rios right away, too.  In Goldenboy, Henry falls in love with Josh, a 22-year-old sometime college student who is briefly a suspect.  The two move in together by the end of the novel even after Josh tests postivie for HIV.  In How Town, Josh is fighting the disease, undergoing treatments and dealing with the early stages of  what became the typical path AIDS took.

I must give Mr. Nava credit for this.  He does not shy away from the subject at all.  But his books never become AIDS books either.  AIDS was part of living in the Bay Area in Goldenboy and in Los Angelos in How Town.  Mr. Nava deals with AIDS just as he does with other aspects of California life in the 1980's.  This portrait of California life is one thing that makes the Henry Rios novels so successful.  Reading then is a bit like trvelling back in time.  As someone who spent the 1980's in California, I continually found myself recognizing the places Mr. Nava described and remembering the events his characters go through.

The Henry Rios novels are what it was really like.  The portrait they paint is not always flattering, but it is true-to-life.

The Little Death by Michael Nava

"I stood in the sally port while the steel 

door rolled back with a clang and then 

I stepped through  into the jail."

Opening to

The Little Death

by Michael Nava

Michael Nava was not the first to create a detective series with a gay protagonist, but he was the first one I read, back in the 1980's when the Henry Rios novels debuted.  Since a new edition of all seven novels came out this year, and since I enjoyed reading all ten of the Martin Beck series last year, I decided to give Micael Nava another go, see how well they hold up, maybe collect all seven, too.

I'm pleased to say that I enjoyed the first one, The Little Death, and that it holds up very well.  

When we first meet Henry Rios, he is working for his final client with the Public Defender's Office, where he recently lost a big case and was transferred to a smaller branch office as a result. His boss thinks he just needs to take some time away, but Henry wants to look for other work.  When an old friend turns up in need of protection, Henry finds himself involved in solving a murderous plot to keep his friend from coming into a sustantial inheritance.  By the end of the book, it's clear to the reader if not quite clear to Henry, that he will soon be a private detective of the old school kind.

This is a left-leaning detective story. While not overtly about gay rights, The Little Death is told from the perspective of those on the ground looking up.  Our detective is an outsider--because he is gay in a straight dominated world, because he is Latino in a world run by whites, becuase he works for the defense when his classmates became corporate lawyers.  His first 'client' is the son of a powerful, wealthy family, old money in California where there is not a lot of old money, but his client is the blacksheep, a drug addict, unsuccessful at everything he ever attempted, and gay, too.  His eventual murder will lead Henry to continue his investigation into the highest levels of the Bay Area's upper crust, without payment, just the way an old-school detective works.  

No one ever seemed to get around to paying Phillip Marlow or Sam Spade, did they? 

While The Little Death still works perfectly well as a detective novel some thirty plus years after its first publication, it's also a window into its time.  I'm not sure how clear of a window it is, though.  It struck me as set in the present.  (It was first published in 1986.)  The descriptions of San Francisco and the surrounding area, much of the book takes place on the Peninsula south of the city, are all spot-on.  While Mr. Nava changes the names of some of the places he describes, I still felt like he was taking me on a tour of the city since I could recall so many of the places he 'named' in The Little Death.  Mr. Nava does this at least as well as Armistead Maupin does in his Tales of the City series.   It wasn't just the era's geography that Mr. Nava got right either.  The way people lived, the things they did, the opinions they held and the actions they took all rang true to my memories of living in San Francsico in the 1980's.  

But it seemed very strange to find no mention of AIDS.  When did we become overwhelmed with AIDS in San Francisco?  1985 maybe?  The disease was certainly around before that, but at some point in the 1980's every aspect, every organization, every entertainment, every interaction, was tinged by it.  You couldn't go anywhere in the city without running into an information table or a fundraiser or at least a poster advertising safe sex.   I was once late to a party because my bus was completly blocked by an ACT-UP demonstration. By the beginning of the 90's every time you ran into someone on the street, which happens all the time in San Francisco, there was a slight sense of dread as soon as the conversation turned to how is so-and-so these days...

So I was surprised to find no mention of AIDS in The Little Death.  There's no clear date stated in the novel, and I'm sure it was written and sent off to the publishers well before 1986.  You could read The Little Death thinking the book took place in the late 1970's, and I didn't find mention of any current event that would clearly establish an exact date for the novel's setting.  Were we all that unaware of the crisis we were already living in?  Was I? 

I intend to read more of the Henry Rios series this summer; I've already got the next two in the series on my TBR shelf.  I imagine AIDS will soon play a big role in the story.  

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt

I was sitting outside the Commodore's

mansion waiting for my brother Charlie

to come outside with news of the job.

Opening to

The Sisters Brothers

by Patrick DeWitt

I found myself sincerely moved by this story of two ruthless, hired killers on their final journey through Gold Rush era California. 

This story probably didn't move most readers.

Eli and Charlie Sisters have spent their lives in the service of The Commodore, a weathly, powerful baron who reigns from his mansion in the Oregon Territory.  He has sent Eli and Charlie to San Francisco to meet one of his agents who will tell them where to find the man they are to kill.  Charlie does not question his job, but Eli has trouble with it.  Eli has been having trouble with their line of work for some time.

The Sisters Brothers is firmly planted in Larry McMurtry territory--an American west where life was cheap and bullets flew fast and frequent, a familiar setting to fans of Deadwood.  Eli and Charlie would have felt right at home in Lonesome Dove.  I made no effort to keep track of how many people Eli and Charlie killed during the course of the novel, but if memory serves me correctly, it's between 12 and twenty.  Not all of them deserved it, but most of them did.   We are talking about a very rough sense of frontier justice, but Charlie and Eli never kill anyone they don't have to, at least from their point of view.

Which is why Eli has a problem with this particular job.  The man they are supposed to kill has invented a  formula for a liquid that causes gold to shine bright when poured into a stream.  It doesn't seem right to Eli that they should steal this man's hard work and then kill him just so the Commodore can become even richer than he already is. 

What moved me, though, were two things, Eli's narrative voice and the bond between the two brothers.   Eli's narration is relatively unadorned, but his lack of advanced education and his straightforward manner of speaking, give the book's prose a quality that I found musical and probably historically accurate.  Someone from 1851 should sound different than someone from 2011, when the book was published.  Eli certainly does.  His narration has a formal edge to it that fits the time period but doesn't reach a level higher than what his character probably would have had.  He writes like someone who knows he should be more proper when writing than when speaking and like someone not familiar enough with writing to avoid sounding a little stilted.  That Mr. DeWitt pulled this voice off so well, impressed me greatly.  I was reminded of Charles Portis's young narrator in True Grit.

But no one is moved by a narrative voice, not really.  What got to me in the end was Eli's devotion to his brother Charlie.  Though both men are morally beyond the pale, if one really thinks about it, Mr. DeWitt gets what it's like to have a brother just like Norman McClean, the author of A River Runs Through It does.  The narrators of both books know that their brother is somewhat lost, that they may not be able to reach him, that they may have to leave him to his fate.  Eli wishes he could convince Charlie that they should leave the Commodore's employ, go back home to their mother, and set up a shop where they could make a peaceful living.  He knows that Charlie is the more capable gun fighter as well.  Charlie is the one who has carried them so far, but his way of life is no longer one Eli can be satisfied with.

He just can't bring himself to abandon his brother.

There's more to it than this; there was more to it in A River Runs Through It, too.  The way Mr. DeWitt and Mr. McClean understand the complexities brothers share is beyond my ability to describe.  It may be something it takes a novel to do.  But, that is what moved me about The Sisters Brothers, what made me read the entire thing in a weekend and what made me root for Charlie and Eli even though the horrible end they seem to be heading for is one they truly deserve. 




Virus Thirteen by Joshua Alan Parry--The Last ARC I Will Ever Read

Tell me if you lived through this---

You’re a brand new book blogger.  You’re having a grand time figuring out how the book blogs-o-sphere works when you realize that other bloggers are getting free books in the mail, Advanced Reader Copies or ARC’s.

How can I get these ARC’s, you wonder.

You sign-up at LibraryThing, NetGalley, various publishers, a few months go by and sure enough, a free book arrives in the mail.

You’re excited to read it until you get twenty or so pages in, then you experience a growing sense of dread.  You keep reading but you know that you’re not going to have anything nice to say about the book.  Wracked with guilt, you figure out a way to be truthful but not hurtful.  You could just be vague.  Focus on the plot.  Don’t directly say that you didn’t like it.  Maybe an author interview instead of a review, you think.

Free books keep coming, a slow trickle then a steady rain, and soon you’re getting books you enjoy, a few you really love.  A year or so passes and you’re getting first string books, things by authors you genuinely admire, popular authors, books you would have bought anyway. 

Then you notice just how high your ARC TBR pile is and you begin to experience a new sense of dread. 

Do I really have to read all these books, you wonder.

You decide that you’re only going to accept ARC's that "interest" you and start to get very picky.  No e-galley’s, no self-published works, no genres outside your comfort zone.  You post very explicit instructions regarding ARC's on your about page.  The free book offers continue to come your way, but not like they used to.  The ARC TBR pile slowing grows smaller, but a few titles manage to slip through your filters and you still find yourself feeling obliged to read books you don’t really enjoy.

Then, one day, you have had enough.  No more ARC’s you say. I’ve already got more books than I’ll ever be able to read. 

So what book was the last ARC you ever read?

Last week, I read mine, a book called Virus Thirteen by Joshua Alan Parry.  The good people at Tor, who  send me a list of ARC’s every month or so, sent it to me.  A science fiction thriller set in a cancer free future, Virus Thirteen is about a madman’s plan to release a gene-altering virus on the world, one that will make people susceptible to cancer once again, so that the human race can return to its normal course of evolution.  About forty pages into the book, I realized that I am simply not the target audience for Virus Thirteen.  Sorry about that good people at Tor.  I finished the book, but I’m not going to review it.  Since I decided to retire from full time blogging and become a part-time consultant, I’m only reviewing books I honestly want other people to read. 

Before I could stop them, Tor books sent me another book, A Time of Change by Aimee and David Thurlo.  I can tell from the cover that I am not the target audience forA Time of Change.  I know there are people out there who take offense when I judge a book by its cover, but seriously.  Look at the cover.  A hot young cowboy is one thing, but throw in a hot young cowgirl and….seriously, I’m just not the target audience.  I can tell from the cover. I really can.

So no more ARC’s for me ever. It’s been fun, it really has.  ARC’s have brought me many books that I loved, a few that have become favorites, and I even enjoyed doing the author interviews.  But no more jello for me, Mom.  I have had enough.

However, if you think you’d like to read either Virus Thirteen or A Time of Change, just let me know in a comment and I’ll be happy to send one or both along to you. 

After all, a free book is a free book. 

Little Boy Blue by Edward Bunker

In the summer of 1943, a plain 

black Ford sedan carried three

people  through the Cahuenga 

Pass from Los Angelos into the 

San Fernando Valley.

Opening to

Little Boy Blue

by Edward Bunker

Edward Bunker's novel Little Boy Blue is not your father's Bildungsroman.

I looked it up.  Turns out, I've been misusing the term myself.  And I thought I was being so smart, showing off literary terms I learned in graduate school.   A Bildungsroman is a coming-of-age story that portrays the development of the protagonist's psychological or moral self from youth to adulthood. This applies to lots of novels, of course.  But I thought the term referred specifically to novels about artists, writers in particular.  Turns out that is a Künstlerroman.  Both terms are German.  The Germans have a word for everything.  

Kunstlerromans your parents may have known include David Copperfield, My Brilliant Career, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, The 400 Blows and The Outsiders.  (Usually, the hero of a Kunstlerroman doesn't start making art, writing, until after the novel has ended.)  I was going to argue that Edward Bunker's Little Boy Blue stands out from the other Kunstlerromans I've read because the hero is a criminal, but now that I think about it--  Ponyboy in The Outsiders spends much of the novel on the wrong side of the law and the young hero in Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows moves from petty crime to reform school. Little Boy Blue is clearly based on the author's own childhood, but The 400 Blows was based on that of its director, Francois Truffaut.  

So the hero of Edward Bunker's Little Boy Blue, Alex Hammond, who moves from an orphanage escapee to petty crime to a stint in San Quinten, isn't really all that exceptional. However, though Alex has it much worse than the other petty criminal Kunstlerroman heros I have known, he is much less sympathetic.  I can't say that I liked him, even a little.  I liked the hero of The 400 Blows and everyone likes Ponyboy.

Alex certainly has it rough from the start, growing up in an orphanage because his father cannot support him and his mother died years before the novel opens.  Shortly after his 11th birthday, Alex's father dies, too.  Alex then runs away for the first time.  The novel follows him through a series of stints in reform schools, then prisons interrupted by periods of freedom lasting from days to months.  Alex finds that he loves the freedom he gets when he runs away so much that he repeatedly does so throughout the novel.  To survive on the streets, he resorts to crime, first petty ones, then a series of increasingly bad hold-ups that eventually end in shootings.  

At every turn he makes bad decisions.  I can't fault an 11-year-old, or a 15-year-old for that matter, for making bad decisions, but it can make for a very unsympathetic hero.  Alex is not really a nice guy.  That he is a fanatic reader helps.  When behind prison bars or reform school fences, Alex finds escape in books.  He is much smarter than his incarcerated peers, but he is also forced to hide this fact in order to survive.  The reader can't help but wonder how society could have saved him.  But I also wondered why he didn't save himself.  When a character screws things up and ends up back behind behind bars three, then four times, I don't think it's unreasonable to blame him a little, even if he is only 15-years-old.  When Alex turns on the aunt and uncle who take him in and give him a basically good home after only two days with them, it's probably impossible for any reader to refrain from blaming him for his fate.  

I should say that neither Alex, nor Edward Bunker, ever ask for sympathy from the reader.  If Little Boy Blue really is the story of Edward Bunker's childhood, then I do have to admire him for being so open about his own life.  Little Boy Blue is not a novel raging against the injustices of society.  Alex was dealt a bad hand from the beginning.  He played his cards as well as he could, but he doesn't really understand the rules of the game.  While this makes for a frustrating character, it is also very true to life.  

 That Alex, Edward Bunker, managed to survive it all and become a successful author, is a testament to something.  I'm just not sure what.