Boystown 3: Two Nick Nowak Novellas by Marshall Thornton

Title: Boystown 3: Two Nick Nowak Novellas
Author: Marshall Thornton
Publisher: Torquere Press
Length: 57,000 words, 196 pages
Buy the book: Publisher

Blurb:

Private Investigator Nick Nowak is back in two novella length mysteries set in Chicago during the early 1980s. In Little Boy Boom, Nick’s car explodes when a thief attempts to steal it. Realizing the bomb was meant for him, Nick sets out to discover who wants him dead only to find that the list of possible suspects is longer than he’d like. When he begins to run out of suspects he wonders if the bomb was truly meant for him.

In Little Boy Tenor, Nick is asked to find the murderer of a church choir’s star tenor, while at the same time his friend Ross asks him to find out the truth behind his lover, Earl Silver’s mysterious death. As he juggles the two cases, he becomes increasingly disturbed by what he learns.

Review:

I’m seriously hooked on these Nick Nowak stories by Marshall Thornton and part of me doesn’t really understand why. I really ought to dislike the man intensely but there’s something about his total honesty to the reader, even whilst he is lying through his teeth to everyone else, that endears him to me. It hard to dislike someone who you can see is lying to himself just as much as he lies to others. Nick is frustrating at times, a complete opportunist when it comes to sex and an emotionally cold man, but I still find him fascinating. That is what keeps me reading these books.

Book three in this series is divided into two novellas. As with the other two books in the series there’s an initial main mystery with some side mysteries that get pulled into the story through Nick’s investigations or by secondary characters. In the first novella, Little Boy Boom, Nick is trying to find out who rigged his car to explode and along the way continues his investigation into a murder from the previous book. In the second novella, Little Boy Tenor, Nick is employed by a murder suspect who wishes to clear his name, and along the way gets sidetracked into discovering the reasons behind the death of a friend. Both mysteries were engaging with Nick spending much of his time travelling around talking to people, getting answers or not, and generally making a nuisance of himself. As the books are all set in 1982 before mobile phones and internet made everyone’s life much easier, Nick’s investigations involve a lot of leg-work. I find this part of the book a mix of interesting but also mundane as that pretty much sums up Nick’s job!

As well as the mysteries, there’s an ongoing story arc for Nick. At the end of book 2, Nick’s lover Harker got sick with what we, in hindsight, can see is AIDS. Harker’s ongoing illness is a sub-plot through the stories as we follow his declining health and the bafflement of Harker’s GP over what is wrong with him. Nick pretends to himself for much of the book that he’s annoyed with Harker and finds the fact that he’s convalescing in Nick’s apartment a real bother. This is belied by Nick’s actions and the occasional tenderness he shows to Harker. Nick is torn between Harker who he claims not to love and Daniel, his former lover who he is trying to get back with and claims that he loves. There’s a constant tension in the books over when he’s going to tell Harker to move out, so he can get back with Daniel. It’s typical of Nick that he ends up pushing that decision aside, until a rather surprising reveal at the end of the second novella.

Knowing that Harker has AIDS, and that it’s possible that Nick is HIV positive lends a completely different slant on all the unprotected sex that Nick has in the book. In the pre-AIDS era, gay men did not use condoms and so I wouldn’t expect Nick to use one either. This meant that each time he takes one of the many opportunities given to him by men who offer him sex (and Nick himself is often baffled about what it is about him that attracts so many unprovoked offers. I think it’s a combination of his bad boy demeanour and his luscious moustache.) I was conscious that Nick had possibly infected yet another man. It’s not difficult to see how the virus spread through the gay population of many cities. Nick’s often cold descriptions of the sex he has – and it is just sex with little emotional attachment for the most part – takes on an extra chilling edge in the knowledge of how much he was putting himself and others at risk.

Another thing I find fascinating about the book is the way book is firmly grounded in the 80’s setting. I’ve mentioned the detecting, but it’s so much more than that. The clothes, hairstyles, music, politics, change in lifestyle and the attitudes in society are all accurately shown. I may have been a child when the book was set, but the sense of nostalgia is strong when I read about the big hair and padded shoulders. The 80’s was a turbulent time and I particularly liked the way that, through Nick’s eyes, we hear about the Falkland’s Conflict, and see the beginnings of the financial boom which is about to spread across the USA.

Overall, I’m greatly enjoying immersing myself in 1982 through the eyes of the rather dour, but practical Nick. The book isn’t always an easy read, but there are flashes of dark humour in Nick’s narrative which stops the themes and plot being too bleak. The mysteries are clever enough that I can’t work out whodunnit and the mix of new and familiar characters continue to be well drawn and interesting. The surprise at the end of the book pretty much guarantees that I shall be reading book 4 and I hope I don’t have too long to wait.