Broken Cord, Boystown #12, by Marshall Thornton

[Ulysses]

Broken Cord (Boystown 12)
By Marshall Thornton
Kenmore Books, 2019
Five stars

This is a sucker-punch to the gut. Nick Nowak is an old friend for Thornton’s faithful readers, and it is hard to see our friends suffer. For readers of my generation, it is doubly hard to re-live the 1980s in such excruciating detail. This discomfort, however, is at the core of Thornton’s power as a storyteller. The Boystown books are collectively Nick Nowak’s Odyssey, his journey through hell. I’m just hoping that there’s something bright at the other side.

There are two deaths in this book – one young, one old. One is personal to Nick, one is business, and yet he brings his whole humanity to each of them, his former inchoate anger focused, relentless in his pursuit of justice and meaning in a world that is beyond his understanding or control. Death, however, is a constant presence here, lurking in Nick’s peripheral vision like a shadow.

There are always three intertwined threads in these books: the long-arc stories, the specific murders tied to each book, and the personal timeline. Right now, Nick’s personal story is the most painful, leaving him blindsided and bereft in a way he never anticipated. He uses the other two threads – an old enemy resurfaces, gun in hand, while a complex scam ends in a baffling murder – to hold himself together, to keep moving forward professionally, even as his private world is crumbling around him.

As I’ve noted before, Thornton’s writing gets better with each installment of Nick’s tortuous path. Despite the darkness that fills this book, there is a good deal of dry humor scattered throughout. Pain – his own and other people’s – has ripened Nick. He’s not the macho Neanderthal he was in the first books. He’s a kind of broken superhero, strangely fearless and sure of himself. He’s also sensitive, aware of beauty, thoughtful and introspective. He’s a far cry from the guy we didn’t like much in the first book.

Nick is only thirty-five. I had somehow thought this series was heading toward a conclusion, but Thornton has faked me out with “Broken Chord.” Nick is now poised at the edge of a cliff, looking out over a vast landscape. How will he get to that distant place from where he stands? How will he survive?

I can’t think of a better way to make me keep reading.