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kaje_harper 's review for:
Broken Cord
by Marshall Thornton
This book really takes the gloves off, as Nick's personal life is unravelling in many ways. As a young gay man in Chicago in that era, everyone around him is looking death in the face in their own ways. Ross is sicker and will not be getting better, ever. Brian is positive. Nick and Joseph have put off their own moments of reckoning long enough, but now it's time to face their own futures, together and separately.
Amid the personal chaos, Nick takes on a case of murder that is likely to be a family affair. A woman married to a much older man, living with him, his two toxic adult children from a previous marriage, and her own teen son, was murdered in a highrise bathroom and everything points to the husband. But Nick was conned into providing the husband with a motive, and he resents that, and it makes him pretty sure the man was actually innocent. Nick has never been one to leave that kind of injustice festering.
And while he investigates that one, in a large way for his own satisfaction, Rita appears back on the horizon, running more scams. She hasn't changed a bit, and he knows she's holding a grudge. It's just a matter of time before her attention is likely to turn his way, unless he can track her down and get her behind bars.
This is a very personal book. The mystery is solid, but not deeply engrossing. Most of the people involved are not very sympathetic, so there's no big emotional investment in who turns out to be guilty. But it is Nick's own life, the strain that HIV/AIDS is putting on him and everyone around him, and the threat of Rita hanging over him, that carries the book forward. The mystery gets solved but the personal end is very unresolved, and I was glad that the last one is out, and that I could immediately get it and open the story.
One more excellent piece of the life story of a complex and interesting man, at a dark time in gay history.
Amid the personal chaos, Nick takes on a case of murder that is likely to be a family affair. A woman married to a much older man, living with him, his two toxic adult children from a previous marriage, and her own teen son, was murdered in a highrise bathroom and everything points to the husband. But Nick was conned into providing the husband with a motive, and he resents that, and it makes him pretty sure the man was actually innocent. Nick has never been one to leave that kind of injustice festering.
And while he investigates that one, in a large way for his own satisfaction, Rita appears back on the horizon, running more scams. She hasn't changed a bit, and he knows she's holding a grudge. It's just a matter of time before her attention is likely to turn his way, unless he can track her down and get her behind bars.
This is a very personal book. The mystery is solid, but not deeply engrossing. Most of the people involved are not very sympathetic, so there's no big emotional investment in who turns out to be guilty. But it is Nick's own life, the strain that HIV/AIDS is putting on him and everyone around him, and the threat of Rita hanging over him, that carries the book forward. The mystery gets solved but the personal end is very unresolved, and I was glad that the last one is out, and that I could immediately get it and open the story.
One more excellent piece of the life story of a complex and interesting man, at a dark time in gay history.