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reviews_and_ramblings
Boystown 7: Bloodlines by Marshall ThorntonGay Mystery / Thriller
Series: Boystown
Paperback: 262 pages
Publisher: Kenmore Books (March 6, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1508545715
ISBN-13: 978-1508545712
Amazon: Boystown 7: Bloodlines
Amazon Kindle: Boystown 7: Bloodlines
In the seventh book of the award-winning Boystown Mystery series, Private Investigator Nick Nowak finds himself simultaneously working two cases for his new client, law firm Cooke, Babcock and Lackerby. A suburban dentist has been convicted of murdering her adulterous husband. Nick is asked to interview witnesses for the penalty phase of the trial—and possibly find the dead man’s mistress. At the same time, he’s deeply involved in protecting Outfit underboss Jimmy English from a task force out to prosecute him for a crime he may not have committed. While juggling these cases Nick slowly begins to rebuild his personal life.
I lived in Chicago at about the time this story is set, and I'll bet the author did, too. He really brought the place alive. This would be a good book for any younger LGBT people who don't understand how mysterious and terrifying the AIDS epidemic was before anyone was paying much attention to the disease that was "only" killing gays.
An interesting portrait of life during the discovery of AIDS. It didn’t feel so much like a story as chapters from a longer book—series so lots of names of people we don’t meet and the main character doesn’t change much. Both mysteries were solved so that’s good. I loved the way the gritty, stripped-down tone echoes classic mysteries. (I was an adult back then and don’t recall the words fuck buddy used until later? That one I’m less sure about than I think pagers were more common by that time, not a great mystery—though way too expensive. I wore one for work in a garage 1982 and I was doing minimum wage stuff.)
