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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE January 22, 1993

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Cordially Invite You to Share Your

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Support Affirmation Recovery

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Entertainment

Michael Nava's hero is a

gay man of the nineties

The Hidden Law

by Michael Nava HarperCollins, $19.00 hardcover, 195 p. Reviewed by Timothy Robson

Now that Joseph Hansen has ended the Dave Brandstetter mystery series, Michael Nava has assumed the mantle of pre-eminent gay suspense writer. The Hidden Law, Nava's fourth novel to feature gay Latino lawyer Henry Rios, is appropriately dedicated to Hansen. The previous books in the series are How Town, Golden Boy, and The Little Death. I have to confess to being an unabashed fan of the series. In my own perverse logic, I want to hoard and ration each new title, not starting to read it, because I know that when I start reading, all too soon it will be finished, and the next Henry Rios installment will still be a year or so away.

Just as Hansen's Brandstetter novels were a multi-volume portrait of aspects of gay life in the '70s and '80s, the Henry Rios books pick up the threads of gay life in the '90s and expand on them--oppression by family and society, AIDS, the formation and dissolution of gay relationships, and the liberation one achieves by being successful as an openly gay professional. Brandstetter was white and rich by inheritance; Rios is Latino, a recovering alcoholic, driven by a self-imposed need to succeed, to escape from poverty and parental abuse. Rios is also forthright about his gayness. The character of Henry Rios has become ever more sharply drawn in each of the first four books. He is the star of the

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stories, which are as much psychological portraits as they are finely crafted suspense novels. Rios is a character in emotional turmoil, and we are drawn into his anguish. It is tantalizing to speculate how much of Michael Nava there is in Henry Rios. The biographical outline of author and character bear striking similarities in ethnic background, education, and career.

Unlike most criminal defense lawyers on television, Henry Rios is cynical enough to realize that many of his clients are scumbags, and that it is his job to get them off or make deals on their behalf. In The Hidden Law Rios defends a drug-addicted teenager who insists that he killed a prominent Latino politician. The politician, like Rios, has fought his way out of the barrio to middle-class respectability. Rios' investigations reveal that the politician's seemingly picture-perfect family life is not what it appears, and as his investigation proceeds the more doubts Rios has about the young man's homicidal assertions. In the process Rios is forced to confront the memories of his own abusive father, Nava writes tellingly about gang warfare and the misuse of political influence. A poignant subplot involves the disintegration of Rios' relationship with his HIV-positive lover.

With each new book in the Henry Rios series, Michael Nava's writing gets stronger, and with his move from Alyson (the publisher of the first two books) to HarperCollins, he has emerged as a major gay writer published by a major mainstream publishing company. All of the books are highly recommended.

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