Carved in Bone

Henry Rios #2

by Michael Nava

Was Bill Ryan's death an accident? Henry Rios has his doubts.
The first new Henry Rios novel in 20 years from six-time Lambda Literary award winner Michael Nava is a brilliantly plotted mystery that weaves together the gripping story of two gay men against the backdrop of 1980s San Francisco as the tsunami of AIDS bears down upon the city.

Genres: Mystery, LGBT, M M Romance, Historical, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Crime

226 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 2019

About the author

Michael Nava is the author of a groundbreaking series of crime novels featuring a gay, Latino criminal defense lawyer Henry Rios. Nava is a six-time recipient of the Lambda Literary Award in the mystery category, as well as the Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award for gay and lesbian literature.

Reviews

[Shile (Hazard's Version) on-hiatus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fear is an acronym, Henry. It can be either Fuck Everything And Run or Face Everything And Recover. Which is it going to be? 🥺

Audiobook book - 4.5 stars🤩

Story - 4.5 heartbreaking stars😪

-Beautifully written book.

-The characters felt so real and the way Nava takes us readers through that awful 80s AIDS epidemic panic, OMG!! So raw and heartbreaking. What a time.

-The mystery was engaging with twists and turns I never saw coming. Me likey alot.

Overall, Henry Rios series is one of the best I have ever read. This book was an amazing addition to the series.

Thanks to my buddy readers for taking this journey with me. 🥳😘😘

[LenaRibka · Rating 5 out of 5]

FYI: The book #8 chronologically takes place between #1 and #2, so if you have just started with the series you could read it after The Little Death).

I am SOOOOOOOOOOO HAPPY that Michael Nava reconsidered his last statement about The Henry Rios Mysteries series...



(just to remind you,
--> the statement: "This book (meant #7) brings to an end this series of mysteries and my career as a mystery writer."

and...

--> my reaction: ...-->......-->...)



This book made me happy (just the existence of it), but also VERY VERY sad. I cried while reading the last pages. But it is understandable: AIDS and the early 80s, a fateful period of time not only for a LGBT community, but for the whole humanity. A difficult topic to deal with, a difficult topic to write about . To read about this time from our present level of knowledge is...not easy, heartbreaking and painful.

There are two plot-lines : the first one is focused on Henry and his battle the inner demons, the other one is the background story of his case: Henry takes a side job in an insurance claim. (Dave Brandstetter mon amour).

An excellent writing, a very compelling and emotional novel. I am so happy to see/meet Henry again.

Don't read all the reviews, just read this series.

***ARC kindly provided by the author via NetGalley in exchange for a honest review.***

[Ulysses Dietz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carved in Bone (Henry Rios #8)
By Michael Nava
Spring 2019 by Persigo Press
Five stars

“So, you too should love the stranger, for that is what you were in the land of Egypt.”

The real difference between this review and the other seven I’ve written for Michael Nava’s novels is that this time the author asked me to read and write about his latest book. How was he to know that I would have bought and reviewed the book anyway?

In reading over my other reviews, I found two recurring themes: my own identifying with both Henry Rios and Michael Nava; and the fact that these books made me cry. Nava and I are the same age; and in “Carved in Bone,” Henry Rios and Bill Ryan are the same age. The crying part (about which I feel no shame) is due to the fact that I’m a happy-ending addict, and there are no happy endings in Nava’s books, really. There is more to it than that, however, because Nava’s intention is to cast light on the pain and alienation that was such an integral part of the experience of our generation of gay men in America. Nava knows what he’s doing, and he’s good at it. For any gay man who survived the 1980s, it hurts.

Chronologically, “Carved in Bone” is an insertion early on in the Henry Rios series, set after “Lay Your Sleeping Head” in 1984. In fact, there are parallel story arcs here. One follows Henry Rios in San Francisco in 1984, scrabbling for extra work by taking on a life insurance investigation (shades of David Brandstetter). The other tracks Bill Ryan from his arrival in San Francisco in 1971 until his life intersects with Henry Rios’ in 1984. The year 1984 was not a good year to be gay in San Francisco, and I can only wonder if the use of the year of George Orwell’s famous book title was not purposeful. I remember 1984, and we all spent a lot of time thinking about Orwell in the time of Ronald Reagan.

Rios is a great storyteller, and the secondary characters who shine brightest in this dark narrative – the flamboyant, redheaded Waldo, and the guileless teenaged Nick – felt real enough to make me forget that this is a mystery and not a memoir. As the story unfolded, and I began to see where Nava was taking me, I confess it got more difficult. Nava seems to want you to figure out the mystery just a tiny bit before Henry Rios himself does, and to be startled by little twists in the plot at the very moment he is. There is a visceral connection between the reader and the characters in the book – at least for readers like me.

Shame, fear, love, hate. There is not a lot of joy in this book – and yet, what joy Nava allows us is sublime, and all the more powerful for its ephemerality. The only real light of hope that shines through is Henry Rios himself – undergirded by the fact that it is 2019 and we know the historic trajectory of the plague and the fight for LGBT rights. This book seems to illustrate Henry Rios’ first resurrection, the moment when his shame turns to strength – I refer to it in another review as a superpower. This is the origin story – not the back story – of the Henry Rios who will go through hell again and again in the future books of this series and survive.

At the end of the book, Henry Rios goes to Washington to see the AIDS quilt spread out on the Mall. It is a moment that, like many others, moved me to tears, but not just because of the plot point it makes. My partner (now husband) and I made that pilgrimage to see that quilt, and I remember walking through those endless rows of handmade cloth memorials, weeping for thousands of people we didn’t know, overwhelmed by the enormity of the destruction to our people.

I am so grateful for Michael Nava and his gift.

[Linda ~ they got the mustard out! ~ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel like words can't do justice to this story. This felt like such an intensely personal story, written by a man who lived through the emergence of the AIDS epidemic, the fear and uncertainty of a disease with no name and no treatment; the hopelessness and frustration of a world that didn't care and actively blamed its victims; the shame and internalized blame for believing that world. Billy's story was tragic, but so was Waldo's and Nick's and everyone else who was living through this time. And Henry, who is trying to be sober in this world that's determined to crush him, who is trying to find the positives and his own worth in a world that only spits at him.

I wasn't sure what these new stories to the series would bring, and more than a little curious after reading Lay Your Sleeping Head, the updated version of The Little Death. This exceeded expectations, and I'm both eager and dreading the next one, Lies with Man.

Thom Rivera (aka Gomez Pugh) really brought this one home, which wasn't unexpected. He did a fantastic job with these characters.

(I originally griped about the reading order on GR when this book was first published. That's been fixed now, and the author kindly shared his plans for this series down in message 6 at the time. Thanks for dropping by, Michael!)

[Kaje Harper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michael Nava is one of my favorite gay mystery writers. I read the original series when it came out back in the 1980s and fell in love with Henry Rios, with his honor, his intelligence, his fierce need to find the truth and see justice done, his drinking, his flaws, his strained family past, and all the parts that make up this amazing, gay, Hispanic lawyer and crusader. So a new Henry Rios story after all this time is a gift.

This book slots in after the first story in the series (The Little Death which has now been rewritten as Lay Your Sleeping Head ) - here we see Henry after he has hit bottom with his drinking and his losses, managing to finally get help. He's trying to rebuild his life. Unable to drum up enough criminal defense cases to pay the rent, he takes up insurance claim work. His first assignment is a gay man dead of a gas leak in the apartment he shared with his lover. The lover, Nick, who was the beneficiary, has vanished, and Henry needs to find him, confirm that the death was accidental, and sign off on the payment. But Nick turns out to be elusive in different ways, the dead man had a difficult past, and this may not be a simple accidental death.

The Henry portion of this story is set in the late 1980s as the AIDS crisis began to really take hold in San Francisco, which along with New York City was ground zero for the gay plague and the devastation it worked on a generation of gay men. The death of Bill, a gay man in his thirties, by accident has a different poignancy set alongside the deaths of so many young gay men from the horrible workings of a disease that was still not well understood. Testing has become available, but as lover after friend is lost, there's a fatalistic mood where every man assumes he's probably positive, mixed with deep anger at the cruelty of fate and society.

And most tellingly and clearly in this story, there is the impact of AIDS on a generation just beginning to believe that their families and churches and authorities were wrong about gay being unnatural and evil. How do you begin to purge that internalized shame and self-disgust from your soul, when God seems to be striking down gay man after gay man with the most horrific suffering? When the more sex a guy has had, the higher his risk? When everything about this plague seems designed to confirm that gay men are miserable sinners unfit for love, undeserving of life?

Half of the book is the story of the dead man - Bill. He comes to San Francisco in the 1970s, exiled from his family, after his father finds him with another boy and beats him hard enough to almost kill him. At eighteen, Bill is terrified, naive, with one interrupted blow-job the extent of his gay experience. He's the product of his upraising, a romantic who wants one lover and a house and picket fence life. He also has a deep well of self-hate inside him. We watch him learn about being gay from the funhouse mirror that is The Castro, from committed gay couples buying homes together, to the rent boys and gay bars and bath houses and underworld, and then the tide of AIDS breaking across that community.

The mystery is a good one. When I thought I had a handle on how things happened, I was surprised again by little twists that open up both the events and the psychology of the participants. The end was satisfying, and real, and poignant.

The context is even better. This book is lest-we-forget reading, and I'd like to see young people read this series for the immersive effect it has on understanding gay history. Like the picture of the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, with the black figures of men lost to AIDS dominating the image, this book is a little gut punch of remembrance and loss, an inside look at how those years impacted a generation. (The series, perforce for its time and setting, carries this sub-theme forward through several of the mysteries - all good reading.)

And yet the story is also positive, and hopeful. Henry is surviving despite all the things pulling him down. He's living with purpose, fighting a good fight against his addiction, despite the sword of his possible HIV status after years of unsafe sex hanging over his head. He has a good friend, and is brilliant and dogged at his job. Death may be stalking The Castro, but people are living their lives despite that.

This series is highly recommended, a multiple reread for me. I picked up the first book revision immediately and dove into it, reminded of how much I like Henry. (Without looking back, I think that the new version is both smoother and more explicit than the original - unsurprisingly since on-page gay sex was far less acceptable in the 1980s.) If you haven't yet encountered Henry Rios, I recommend starting with book 1 - Lay Your Sleeping Head, but this one could stand alone as a first time read.

[Optimist ♰King's Wench♰ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carved in Bone is an emotional and poignant read set in the epicenter of the plague at its peak. Nava takes us on two parallel journeys: one Henry Rios who's struggling to remain sober at a time in his life where everything is in flux and Billy Ryan who is afraid of his own shadow in a city brought to its knees by the "gay cancer".

"The world we grew up in told us queers are sick or sinful or criminal. Those were our choices. We metabolized that message. That self-hatred is part of us and like you said, it's waiting for us, waiting to exploit those moments of weakness or doubt when it tells us the world was right after all. Tells us we're defective, abnormal, broken. That voice is what drives our compulsions-for booze or drugs or sex-anything to drown it out, to distract ourselves or it takes us to that place where self-destruction seems like the only option."

The above exemplifies what both Rios and Ryan struggle with in their own unique ways. What Nava does exceptionally well is crafting not only these two characters in the grey but even the secondary ones. All of these people touched me in one way or another. None of them are perfect but for me that's precisely what takes them from two-dimensional to fully realized and thus relatable.

It's hard for any human being to be hated for something that he or she cannot change and even those who are strong enough to resist the hatred as irrational cannot help but be damaged by it.

That hatred is something that affects each and every one of these characters but what makes this book and Nava's writing zeitgeistian, if you will, is how that hatred manifests itself in varied ways for each of them during this specific time. He captures the mindset of this period exceptionally. All of which probably sounds terribly and relentlessly lugubrious but it actually wasn't. Well, not entirely. Waldo, my dear, sweet, sassy, ginger, love muffin of sagacity provides the levity.

"Honey, if you're going to take sex advice from a bunch of men in dresses, I'd choose drag queens over priests. At least drag queens have had sex."

Also, Nava infused the narrative with a sense of hopeful optimism that I often wondered if it was a form of catharsis for him, if in retelling this story he's taken on the older, wiser, more enlightened role of Larry or even Simon, doling out insightful and thoughtful advice to a younger version of himself.

Fear is an acronym, Henry. It can be either Fuck Everything And Run-or Face Everything And Recover. Which is it going to be?

Or the response to the first quote:

"The good news is that you know that voice is a lie. You know who you are and you know you're not any of those things the world says about you."

Undoubtedly, these characters and their journeys got under my skin and evoked a multitude of emotions in me, but the mystery took a backseat with the circumstances of Bill's death being obvious. Though I do appreciate Nava's propensity to focus on the why rather than the how, what, who or when of an investigation because oftentimes the why is far more interesting than the rest. In this particular case though Bill's death was more a vehicle for telling the story of San Francisco caught in the grips of the black plague rather than a mystery and I missed that since Lay Your Sleeping Head was truly compelling not to mention cerebral.

Nevertheless, I continue to be dazzled by Nava's prose and its rich anachronism and will be diving headfirst into Goldenboy.

[Eugenia · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first Michael Nava book....AMAZING! I’m having a hard time processing this book due to both its stark and beautiful prose, and the setting Nava chose for his mystery: San Francisco, 1984..

The tale spins out in a split narrative—one of Henry Rios, who is investigating a death insurance claim; one of Bill Ryan, the recently deceased.

Nava paints a picture of a San Francisco full of hedonistic pleasure contrasted against the devastating rise of AIDS in the gay community. His characters are not only living in this world, but also trying to make sense of it. Bill, through drink and obsessive love; Henry through sober lens and his sponsor.

Both storylines drew me into the lives of the men they depicted—men who walked with flaws and tried their best to overcome them. As Nava spins his tale, the mystery slowly unwinds and I admit that I thought I had it figured out, until I didn’t. It’s always a pleasure to be wrong in guessing the full mystery.

I won’t go into a description of the book, for that you have the blurb. I’ll simply say that this book does have heart, love, romance, mystery, pain, and death. It’s also a book deeply moving due to the magnitude and effects of AIDS on the gay community. It’s a time when I came of age myself. It’s a time when I lived in the Castro and I could only see this fictional account too vividly in the streets of my neighborhood.

Read it.

Warnings: drug use, water sports, bathhouse anonymous sex, humiliation, abuse.

**ARC received from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review**

[NicoleR.M.M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m overcome with sadness. The way this book tells the story of being gay in the early 80’s in San Francisco, when AIDS made its first victims in a time when finally progress seemed to have been made in the gay community for people to be free to be themselves, AIDS struck and forcefully and brutally ended that period of hope and progress. It’s the fear and shame, the inability to accept oneself and the unaccepting society, that harshly and without any doubt concluded that this was all because the homosexuals and lesbians brought this upon themselves for being who they were, being unnatural and freaks, that Michael Nava writes about in this second book of Henry Rios and he writes it down so well that I feel the sadness within my heart and my bones.

This story of all these men, rejected by their families for being gay, and eventually rejected by a society that condemned them too, is heartbreakingly real. In particular Bill Ryan’s story, that begins when he’s caught with a guy in his bedroom. His father physically abuses him before he is thrown out of the house, put on a bus to San Francisco to start a new life on his own. Barely 18 years old and from a small town where being gay was a major sin, he has to find his way in a world he is unfamiliar with, but where he does find others like him.
Told in different pov’s and in time jumps, this story is not only a recount of this black period in human history, but also a suspense story, where Henry Rios investigates Bill’s death before the life insurance company will be able to pay the money to his sole beneficiary Nick, the guy who was Bill’s lover at the time he died. What should have been an easy job, ends up being a little more complicated than Henry thought.
It was interesting to see how Bill’s story unfolded and simultaneously see how Henry goes on after he lost his lover in the first book.

This is so well written with Henry being such an interesting mc, that I already look forward to pick up the other books in this series.
Highly recommended!

[monika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell.

I thought I was prepared for this book, but it touched me so profoundly that I am surprised and overwhelmed by the flood of emotions.

But let the author speak:


”It’s hard for any human being to be hated for something that he or she cannot change and even those who are strong enough to resist the hatred as irrational cannot help but be damaged by it. Those who lack this strength, which is probably most of us, can be driven into the darkness of self-destructive thought and behavior out of which they may never emerge.
The onset of the epidemic only increased the burden of difference, not only for gay men but for lesbian women as well, because it empowered all the old lies that had been told about all of us from time immemorial.”

[Elena · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars

Not an easy read, this book. Not a surprise, considering that it deals with hard themes (Content warning for alcoholism, abuse, homophobia, depiction of the AIDS epidemic) and it doesn’t shy away from the ugliest details.
The alternating POVs were unusual and I’m not sure why the author chose such a different structure, with the victim’s POV narrating his life in third person while Henry maintained the usual first-person POV in the present, conducting his investigation, but it was very effective, allowing the reader to find out everything and in such details that wouldn’t have come across only through Henry’s investigation, considering that some of the most important characters are dead by the time he starts it.
I had a theory about the “mystery” part of the plot—if you can call it that—and it turned out to be right, give or take a couple of details that I didn’t see coming, but that wasn’t a problem because the strong point of that part wasn’t the mystery itself, it was all that came before, with Bill’s life and the dynamics between the characters unfolding and the story drawing parallels and distinctions between Bill’s choices and Henry’s.
This book confirmed my first impression of Henry’s character—I like him a lot and he’s one of the best I’ve met in a while—and had quite a bit of character development for him. He has a lot of issues, but I like how he’s struggling and overcoming them, step by step, never stopping being the good guy he is. I especially loved his friendship with Larry, which was why I was not happy at all when at the end of the book it was revealed that Larry is positive to HIV. I hope nothing awful is coming his way, but I expect it will and it sucks. For him, for Henry, and for me.
Despite all the sadness and the heaviness, I finished the book (and the author’s note) with a hopeful, positive feeling. I’ll need a break, before I dive back into Henry’s world again, but I’m very much looking forward to the next book.

The only issue I have is with the editing. It bothered me a lot to see such a great story published with all these typos and missing words, so much that I considered rounding down because of it. I decided to close an eye, since it’s rare enough for me these days to find a book I want to give a five-star rating to, but I hope this is a one-time occurrence in the series. I just took a look at my review for the first book and I noticed that I complained about the editing there too. Not a good sign.

Thanks to Linda, Rosa and Shile for the conversation, the company, and the patience when I made them wait for me to finish. Again.

[alyssa · Rating 5 out of 5]

they must've installed faulty pipes, because these tears won't stop leaking.

i prepared to write this with my heart lodged in my throat, but i can't muster up more than a few words - this book more than speaks for itself on a magnitude only felt in your bones. Michael Nava masterfully casts the rawest light on gay history in America: the shame, alienation, and self-hatred. the misguided beliefs curdled in fear of the unknown.

a must-read lest we forget the community's numerous sacrifices.

[Cyndi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't know there were so many different ways to be sad. This book broke my heart. The ways in which Michael Nava describes pain and trauma and shame are both achingly poetic and woefully relatable. Two books in and I'm loving the way his stories take place in the gray areas that people often forget about when deciding between guilt and innocence. The way this book was written in alternating timelines and POV's made it even more impactful as the two separate stories eventually coalesced into the truth of what happened. It was such an interesting way to structure a mystery and kept me glued to the pages. I considered taking a break to read something a bit lighter in tone, but I think I'm too invested in Henry Rios now. I need to know what happens next.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rounded up from 4 1/2 stars. Attorney Henry Rios takes on a side job as an insurance claim inspector. When he is assigned to investigate the death of a gay man living in San Francisco we learn about the man & his partner. The story takes place during the mid 80’s with flash backs to the 70’s. Due to the time frame the AIDS crisis is Featured heavily. I found the overall story grabbed my attention from beginning to end though the actual “mystery” behind the investigation was not nearly as interesting as the characters & their story. I highly recommend this book. Thank you too Netgalley & the publisher for allowing me to

[Gabi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent!
Even better than the first book.
One of the best books I’ve read in 2024!
I’m looking forward to the next books in this series.

“Being comfortable in your own skin happens when you really and truly accept who you are. When you love yourself.”

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

No spoilers, which is very hard. I want to unpack this book so bad, but I will wait and do it in person.

That said I am simply delighted to be reading a new Henry Rios novel. I have devoured every one of Michael Nava's criminal lawyer turned murder solver Henry Rios' stories about an intelligent, complicated man who is gay, Hispanic, a recovering alcoholic, and struggling to find his place in the world. It's a beautiful series. I was so happy and grateful when Nava rewrote his first novel, The Little Death - packing it with what he couldn't originally say in 1986 which became the 2016 novel, Lay Your Sleeping Head. Now in 2019, Nava prepares to release a brand-new mystery. But instead of having it take place in present time, Nava sandwiches it between books 1 and 2. So Henry is in San Francisco during the beginning of the AIDS crisis. Nava also parallels the story of the victim who came to the bay area ten years earlier.

The genius of this book goes beyond another Henry Rios novel. For me that would have been enough. But Nava presents us with a story that twists and turns into something I've never read before in mystery. And he reminds us how far we've come in our struggle as LGBT folk and how grateful we should be - those of us who survived the AIDS epidemic. His story does all of that and more.

I'm in awe. Thank you Persigo Press and Net Galley for giving me Michael Nava who hit it out of the park. Mystery readers, LGBT literature lovers, social history buffs, and more - run to your library or bookstore on October 1, 2019.

[The Novel Approach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carved in Bone, the eighth installment in Michael Nava’s revered Henry Rios Mysteries series, is a story composed of loneliness and fear. There is, among other recurring elements, a thread of anxiety that undercuts the basic need for human connection which goes straight for the emotional jugular. And Nava’s aim is true.

The story opens in 1971, in a small town located on the outermost fringes of Chicago’s suburban sprawl, not with Henry but with eighteen-year-old Bill Ryan. Nava grooms readers to form an emotional connection to Bill, to foster an understanding of the exhilaration he feels to finally explore his sexuality in a true and meaningful way. And then in empathy as the spontaneous joy is replaced by horror and grief in the aftermath of what should have been a perfect moment. Nava succeeds in weaving the emotional connectivity between character and reader here, and these were the first of many more tears I would offer to this story before its end.

During his stay in the hospital, Bill is remade into someone new. He becomes one more in the plenitude of throwaway kids, offered a couple hundred dollars and dumped at the bus station by his mother to make his own way in the world, yet another soul added to the myriad souls which already populated the landscape of a San Francisco that was becoming a sanctuary for gay men. The structure and shape Bill takes, thereafter, is delineated first by his declaring out loud, for the first time, that he’s gay; followed by the people he meets, the friends he makes, the spaces he moves through, and the found family and the commonality he discovers within the community. He is galvanized by the acceptance he hadn’t expected to find, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t still an undercurrent of loneliness that, as the years passed, morphed into an emotionally paralyzing fear and self-loathing.

Bill’s and Henry’s stories converge in 1984, when Henry is hired by Western Insurance to investigate a life insurance claim. It’s far from his dream job, but after nearly drinking himself to death, Henry doesn’t have much choice but to pursue it. The investigation into Bill’s sudden death appears to be a clear-cut case of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. As Henry digs deeper, however, the clues and facts don’t add up, and, in fact, he uncovers a graver, unexpected layer of criminality. It’s through his investigation that the story alternates points of view. Rather than Henry showing readers, through the procedural of the investigation, how Bill spent the ten-plus years after his arrival in San Francisco, we are instead offered a more intimate view of the years during which Bill made the Castro his home with his best friend Waldo. Readers are made firsthand witnesses to Bill falling in and out of love, and then in love again for the final time, with Nick Trejo, a man ten years his junior. By then, Bill had made something out of the nothing he began with, but his past still nipped doggedly at his heels.

Found family and falling in love never quite fills the hole left gaping in Bill’s life caused by the misery of rejection and the belief that he was made wrong and isn’t deserving of the life he sees so clearly but cannot grasp. Bill continued to hope for the hopeless, but his efforts were an exercise in futility. As a result, he punished himself for who he was, which is reflected in the choices he made, and those ties to his past eventually became a noose. Bill’s should have been, could have been, the story of the throwaway kid who made good. But, as Nava states so candidly in his Author Notes:

“It’s hard for any human being to be hated for something that he or she cannot change, and even those who are strong enough to resist the hatred as irrational cannot help but be damaged by it.”

This is where the book finds accord with its title. Bill’s self-loathing and abject fear became a living and breathing thing, carved into his core and crippling him mentally and emotionally. This went on to spawn the possessive, suffocating love Bill offered Nick, who embodied the antithesis of who Bill was. The impact of the AIDS epidemic and the near debilitating terror it inspired puts paid to any sort of peace Bill might have found, which Nava handles with unvarnished truth and unbridled compassion. The losses were devastating, the sense of helplessness was crushing as a dispassionate government watched, and it becomes clear, as Henry’s investigation continues, that anger and fear and loneliness are a few things he and Bill had in common, which was the catalyst for the desire to each numb their feelings in various ways.

As Henry pursues answers with the resolve readers of this series are familiar with, it is impossible not to draw parallels and note the clear juxtaposition between Henry’s investigative tenacity and his reluctance to pick apart his own past and poke at some of the more profound feelings he’s been holding on to for years. His AA sponsor, Larry Ross, becomes an invaluable cog in the machine of Henry’s sobriety and a voice of reason when Henry appears headed towards disaster with a man who, while never anything but honest with Henry, was also not good for him. Larry’s role is also emotionally underscored by a revelation that adds yet another gut-check to a story rife with emotional gut-checks, propelling Henry into making a life-changing decision.

That Henry Rios was introduced more than thirty years ago, and that his character still resonates with audiences today, is a testament to the timelessness and relevance of his stories as well as to the author’s storytelling acumen and the sympathy Nava builds between reader and character. The alchemy of emotions that can change a person for better or worse are commonalities of a human condition that bridges differences. The setting of the story is an homage to a San Francisco both past and present, to her unique landscape and the diversity of her people. The Painted Ladies, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Castro, and her vibrancy come alive and provide the backdrop for a mournful time in history. A painful time that echoes across the years and lives on in the memories of those who survived and in the journals and stories of those who didn’t.

Reviewed for The Novel Approach

[*The Angry Reader* · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of you will understand this. And some of you won’t. I cried through most of this book. Neither happy crying nor sad crying. Just sort of crying because what was said was beautiful and true and frustrating and unfair. And, of course, what is “fairness” and what does it matter? Which led to more crying - Bc, hey, lawyer. Fairness, in all its glorious non-existence, is important to me.

So I understand that this book, chronologically the second in the series, was released in the last year or so. I’m not sure if more time spent with the series or spent writing is what honed Mr Nava’s craft to a fine point. But holy smokes. Where the first book appealed to me because it was fun and different and simply written - this book was just old fashioned fantastic.

It is, by far, the best book I’ve read in 2020. I hesitate to call a book flawless, but it’s applicable here.

[Rosa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't write a review of this without crying. This story broke my heart, and it should be read. Now more than ever, in this time when rights are starting to go backwards. When people are starting to forget how things were not so long ago. Now that we've grown complacent. We failed as a society before, we can't afford to fail again.

Thank you to my fellow BReaders for the company, I don't know if I'll be of much use in the discussion, this is just too painful.

[Annika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Audiobook review

Carved in Bone was told from two timelines, the now following Henry Rios in his present in the 80’s. It’s set a while after the first book, I’m not too sure about the timeline, but I think it’s been a few years since the events in Lay Your Sleeping Head. He’s now trying to start over and get his life back on track. He’s sober and has a sponsor, next up is a job. And a step in that direction is to get back to practice law again, which is why a friend offers him a trial position investigating insurance claims to make sure they aren’t fraudulent. His first case is investigating Bill Ryan’s life.

Bill Ryan’s story is the second timeline we are following. It starts out in the early 70’s when Bill was a teenager just realizing he was gay and being thrown out and ostracised for being gay. We follow him to San Francisco and how he creates a new life for himself there, with new friends and new loves. Then we reach the 80 where his life changes drastically and ultimately culminates in the reason why Henry is tasked to investigate his life, trying to get a feel for him and the people surrounding him.

I love the quiet pacing of this series so far. It’s almost soothing in a way. Well, if you ignore the tragic and horrible events taking place, because they will play with your emotions like nothing else. Not in a manipulating way or for the sake of it, just because there are so much to be felt and that life isn’t always fair or easy – especially during this time. The way of life back then felt slower, there was time to just stop and take a breath and just be for a moment. I’m not trying to say it was better, but it was different. Michael Nava has a very captivating way of writing. He paints pictures so clearly and makes you feel deeply.

Thom Rivera was a wonderful addition to this book. His performance made Henry, Bill, Nick, Adam and the rest of them come alive. He fit the story, the characters and the timeline. He took you back to the 80’s just as surely Nava did with his words. He made you feel everything the characters did, the good and the bad. It was wonderful to listen to his voice for the past hours, and I’m looking forward to listen to the rest of the series.

Both the book and the series are highly recommended to anyone looking for a well-written gay mystery.

A copy of this book was generously provided by the author in exchange for an honest review

[Dee · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars

This is the first book I’ve read by this author, and although it’s 8th in a series, I had no trouble following the story. There were a few times I felt I would’ve got more out of the story if I knew Henry Rios better, but overall it didn’t matter.

The story alternates between Billy’s point of view and Harry’s. Bill’s parts are told in third person, and Harry’s in first.

As an eighties child, I enjoy books set in that era, but other than the abject fear of AIDS at that time, not a lot about the story sets it aside from a modern story.

There’s a crime to be solved, but nothing that involves too much thinking, as a good deal of it is spelled out, so the reader isn't left scratching their head.

My biggest gripe was the bi-erasure. Other than that, this was an entertaining read.

Content warning - dubious consent.

Copy obtained via the ‘read now’ section on NetGalley.


RAMBLINGS WHILE READING - Referring to Adam as the straight boy is really starting to piss me off. You're f*&king him. He admitted he sleeps with both men and women, that makes him bisexual, not straight.

Considering this story is set in San Franciso, a decade later than the below, this is either a classic case of bi-erasure or lack of research.

The longest surviving bisexual community centre, the San Francisco Bisexual Center, opened its doors in 1975. Glaad.org.

[PaperMoon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant new offering from Nava after such a long hiatus! This is a parallel tale of two men, one whose death is being being investigated by the other; multiple similar life experiences and mindsets that become evidently clear to the reader (and also Rios himself) as the book progresses. The main difference (and consequently life outcome) would come from outside assistance/advice/interventions heeded (or not) by these two gay men living in the mid 1980's. The focus of the investigation is on the whys & hows of Bill's death but the killer would be far closer to both men than they could imagine! The final couple of plot twists were unexpected but cogent to the tale. There's not a lot of M-M romance although there's a promise of such at the very end. Readers familiar with The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man's World will find familiar themes being reiterated in this whodunnit. Here's hoping the author does not await another decade before the next Henry Rios title!

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh, Henry, you ache.
Heart wrenching AIDS chronicle.
Two men, of many.

[JR · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know how to review this book, it's too good for any words I can write. He has managed to take a dark period for the gay community, display it with all it's warts,it's fears, and all it's love and humanity. It is compelling,and heart wrenching. Henry Rios is a symbol and icon for the period. If you weren't alive or old enough to remember it, you need to read this.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most days during the first half of 2020, I found enough to keep occupied and feel productive. By July, however, I was tired of being responsible and safe but knew I must still be for a much longer time.

I missed people. I missed doing things. I missed variety in my life. I needed an escape from the tedium of a pandemic.

So, to keep from slacking off from the best practices for staying physically healthy, I decided to find something purely escapist to read-- something that would keep me rooted to home.

So, I picked up a mystery novel by the award-winning mystery author, Michael Nava.

Michael Nava is an American attorney, former staff person for the California Supreme Court, and writer of an eight-volume mystery set featuring Henry Rios, a gay, Latinix, criminal defense attorney struggling with his own demons, including alcoholism. Nava is also the winner of several Lambda Literary Awards which are given to books with a LGBTQ interest.

The book did keep me entertained but also proved to be more than a light mystery. It works with three questions:
1) Was the death of Bill Ryan, San Francisco real-estate man, an accident?
2) Who might next fall prey to the new and mysterious disease infecting gay men?
3) How does growing up in a hostile environment affect gay men and their relationships?

The story is set in 1984 San Francisco with flashbacks to 1971. In 1971, eighteen-year-old Bill Ryan struggles with his sexuality in his small conservative Illinois town. Living in a time when being gay is considered criminal, sinful, and a mental illness, Bill has no role models, sees no representation, and begins to hate himself as he internalizes the messages of his family, church, government, and society.

Bill’s father catches him having sex with another boy, severely beats his son, and disowns him—not an unusual story. With nothing but a bag and a few dollars, Bill finds himself taking a bus to San Francisco.

The story then moves into the early 1980s as a new virus begins killing thousands of persons, especially gay men. Attorney Henry Rios is out of rehab and beginning his journey through AA as he strives to live a life of sobriety. Like many gay men who internalized society’s hatred of them, Rios had often found himself coping by drinking.

With his practice in disarray, Rios takes a job as an insurance investigator. His first case involves the death of a man who died of gas poisoning by a leak at his apartment. That man, the reader soon learns, is Bill Ryan, who is a successful real-estate person who is severely troubled and damaged.

While Rios conducts the routine investigation required before the life insurance company will pay Ryan’s beneficiary--his lover Nick—he comes to question if the death was an accident.

By alternating chapters between 1971 and the early 1980s, the novel tells the story of Rios and Ryan and how they became so damaged. Both men had internalized society’s messages about them even though both wanted nothing more than to be successful, productive citizens, able to live their life fully and openly, and able to love and be loved.

Unlike many mystery stories, Carved in Bone is driven more by character than plot. I enjoyed the mystery plot line but found myself more engaged by the novel’s character development of Henry Rios and Bill Ryan. The book was still escapist reading for me, but also became something more thoughtfully engaging than I expected. It is, in the end, a story of love and desire, shame and self-loathing, and the search for wholeness and self-love in a hostile environment. It is also the story of exploitation, greed, fear, and an epidemic.

Carved in Bone was a pleasant surprise. I look forward to reading more of Michael Nava’s books.

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Round up to 4.5 stars.

I'll start by noting I have not read any of the previous books in the series - this can be read as a standalone.

This is not a romance. There is no HEA. This is the story of one man, Bill Ryan – representing many gay men – who finds himself in San Francisco and how he coped. This is a sober look back at what it was like to be gay in San Francisco in the 1980’s during the AIDs epidemic.

This is the story of Henry Rios, who finds himself investigating of the death of Bill Ryan. Through the eyes of both men, the reader is taken on a heart wrenching journey of coming out, being kicked out, what it meant to be gay in San Francisco in the 1980’s, and the hope of finding someone to love and to love us back.

This story packs so much between the pages - The author adroitly incorporated generational attitudes, which gave the book and story an interesting view. That our main character and a sub-character are Latino (different generations and presumably all raised Catholic) which is not a viewpoint frequently seen. Addiction has a significant role in this book, as Henry is working through being an alcoholic and Bill Ryan with his need to punish himself through degradation, drugs and drink.

The mystery isn’t so much of a mystery to the astute reader, but it’s how the author flowed between Henry and Bill that matters. It’s watching everything unfold. The reader is pulled in and tossed along in the rapids with all the other characters until the books resolution.

For the most part I enjoyed this book – I had to skip a very small part of the opening scene as it was a bit emotionally intense, but it is important to establish the setting. I think it also helped that I remembered the fear that swept the nation in the 80’s AIDs epidemic, and to see it from a different – older – perspective gave weight to the overall story.

This book won’t be for everyone. There are definitely some triggers – child abuse/disowning, alcoholism, domestic abuse, and personal degradation, and dying. But these are integral to the story, integral to the world of Henry Rios, and overall, this was a very powerful story.

Review will be cross-posted at Gay Book Reviews
A copy of the book was provided by the author in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!

[Anthony McGill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read just about all in the series of Michael Nava novels featuring Henry Rios. I found this one exceptional and the best in the series, and that's saying something as Nava's previous works have all been excellent.

A superb mystery where nothing is quite as it seems as Rios, a recovering alcoholic and still suffering the loss of lover Hugh Paris (see "Lay Your Sleeping Head") and short on lawyer work is hired by an insurance company to investigate a claim brought on by the accidental death of Bill Ryan, a successful businessman but traumatized gay man.

Every character in this complex novel has been drawn to perfection by Nava. From Henry's personal issues and possibility of a new relationship, Ryan never fully recovering from getting chucked out of home as a gay teen and his ups and downs in forging a new life in the halcyon days of San Francisco's gay utopia of the 1970s, to the scourge of the approaching AIDS crisis a decade or so later, to the young and openly gay Nick Trejo falling head first into these tumultuous events.

Not only an excellent crime novel but a fascinating look into the past as Nava captures a time and place which will certainly invoke vivid memories to those of us who either lived in or visited San Francisco in the 70s and 80s. Full of colorful characters, many flawed individuals, a cracking good story that never bores - and still allowing potent comments on gay teen rejection, gay teen acceptance, a newly found freedom to explore your real self, AIDS, alcoholism (and AA) with Henry sorting out his own issues and even enjoying a few unexpected spicy moments.

Henry Rios is a fictional national treasure and hopefully Michael Nava has more to come in this fabulous series of mystery novels.

[Jax · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best portrayal I’ve read of the damage caused by growing up with the constant message that you’re deviant, wrong, unlovable. Reminded me why I loved this series so much.

[~nikki the recovering book addict · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars

On an intellectual level, I appreciated the writing and the imagery and emotions it brought forth so vividly. But on an emotional level, it was a very heavy topic and with it came the sadness, the anguish, the despair and the helplessness of the 1980s AIDS epidemic.

I wanted to give in so many times not because it was a badly written book. No no, certainly not. The writing was great. The whodunit mystery, even better. It never goes the way I always think it would go. But gosh, the emotions!! So heavy and depressing.

Feeling this prolly 3rd hand has been so crushing. I can’t imagine living it first hand. The suffering of the illness was one thing. The hate and the cruelty of fellow humans were even worse. I’d like to think we’ve risen above that but hate still exists and is so viscerally visible today. That’s crushing.

[Paul Manytravels · Rating 4 out of 5]

By the end of Carved in Bone, I liked the book and was glad I had read it. Along the way, however, I did not feel very well disposed toward it and might have quit reading it if had I not been reading it as a ‘Buddy Read.”
. Reading it as a mystery story disappointed me, even though there is a genuine mystery to be solved. There really is not very much mystery in the book The first chapters of the book, however, spend little time on the mystery or anything related to it. The transition from chapter 3 to chapter 4 is so rough, that my reading buddy and I both had to go back to earlier chapters to be sure we were reading the same book.
The story involves Bill Ryan who discovers at about age 18 that he is gay. His father catches him having sex with his friend Marco and brutalizes him so much that he requires a lengthy stay in the hospital and even has his spleen removed.
When he emerges from the hospital, his mother gives him a little money, takes him to the bus station and tells him he is no longer a part of their family.
Bill ended up in San Francisco full of bitterness and shame. Throughout the book, he is never able to fully overcome his own demons nor the demonic judgments of his family. His Catholic upbringing helped him to go deeper into the depths of shame and self-hatred, something many of us who grew up Catholic will recognize even as we continue our own battles to overcome the damages. (Being Catholic is a life-sentence).
In San Francisco, Bill is lucky enough to find a mentor and quasi-savior in Waldo, a comfortable with himself queen, who guides him through the perils of learning the streets and facing his own sexuality.
Bill is never able to end the shame his family and the church assigned him and engaged in all of the typical self destructive behaviors that include reckless and promiscuous sex together with self-humiliation, cocaine, and alcohol.
Waldo does all he can to help him through this stage.
At last, Bill meets Nick, an innocent man 10 years younger than he is, and the two fall in love.
Bill never escapes his self-shame sufficiently to believe that Nick could love him and be committed to him, now and again returning to self-destructiveness and pushing Nick away.
Henry Rios, the lawyer-detective character author Michael Nava uses in his crime novels, enters the scene when Bill is found dead, and his lover, Nick, nearly dead. the death, however, has been ruled as “accidental.”
Bill left behind an insurance policy worth $100,000 with Nick as the beneficiary. The insurance company, like all insurance companies, is reluctant to pay the claim and hires Rios to do a deep investigation of the case.
The setting for all of this occurs during the early years of the AIDS epidemic and that circumstance has a great deal to do with the story.
I found myself rather liking the book in the end, but it took me between 1/2 and 3/4 of it before I did.
The writing is otherwise pretty good and the book offers “teachings’ both on alcoholism and AIDS that resonate well with the storyline and also offer insights to readers.
I had read one other Nava novel and recall that it, too, started off slow. I have yet another already on my shelf. Whether or not I like the next one that I already own will have everything to do with whether I read more or not.

[Bizzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s interesting that when Nava was working on this series for republication in 2019, he added this book to the series instead of just reworking what was book 2 in the series. Comparing the old and new blurbs, it seems like this was done to better establish Henry’s relationship with Larry (who is his AA sponsor in this book) and change how he meets another major character introduced in book 3. Since I haven’t read the old version I can’t speak to how effective these changes were, but it makes me curious to compare them.

I liked the mystery in this book but I’m not sure the structure of the story was totally effective. Showing key moments in Bill’s life through his own POV gave his character more nuance than he would have had if we had learned about him solely through Henry’s witness interviews, and I appreciated that his POV chapters showed that even the people closest to him didn’t always see him clearly, due in part to their own biases and in part to Bill’s secrecy (and the interviews with other characters showed that Bill’s narration wasn’t always honest). However, because Bill’s past and Henry’s present are different stories being told in the same book, neither gets the space it needs to develop. Bill and most of the characters in his chapters feel more like archetypes than real people, and they’re all very standard characters you find in historical stories about gay men. That by itself isn’t a problem – those character types all derive from real life – but they need development to distinguish them from their archetypes and show individual variations. That never really happens in this book.

Henry’s conversations with Larry, his sponsor, are also a problem. I get why Nava wanted to tell the story of Henry finding sobriety and explain why he moved from San Francisco to LA, but having his sponsor repeatedly lecture him wasn’t a great way to do that. Henry’s actual struggle with sobriety is mostly absent from the book, as is the reason he decided he needed help in the first place. He talks about those things with Larry but we don’t witness them ourselves, and at no point in this book does he ever feel like he’s actually struggling. It also doesn’t help that Larry always has a motivational speech or the right answer and Henry pretty much always takes his advice. There’s no subtlety and no conflict in this part of the story, and I don’t think it adds much to Henry’s character arc – especially because Larry and his lessons are almost never referred to again. This is the problem with adding a book to the middle of an already-completed series – all you can really do with it is fill in whatever blanks you left when you originally wrote the series. You can’t add anything meaningful to the story that isn’t already there.

Overall, this book had a lot to say about identity, trauma, the impact of societal and internalized homophobia, and the way that prejudice can limit people’s ability to understand themselves and their place in the world. Nava’s exploration of these themes throughout the series is what sets it apart from other mystery series (that and the legal stuff actually being correct).

Please note that if you’re buying this series through Amazon, Amazon shows the series in the incorrect order. Amazon lists Lies with Man as book 8 because it was published last, but chronologically, Lies with Man is book 3 and comes between Carved in Bone and Howtown.