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Henry Rios #3

Lies with Man

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Los Angeles, 1986.
A group of right-wing Christians has put an initiative on the November ballot to allow health officials to force people with HIV into quarantine camps―and it looks like it’s going to pass. Rios, now living in LA, agrees to be counsel for a group of young activists who call themselves QUEER [Queers United to End Erasure and Repression]. QUEER claims to be committed to peaceful civil disobedience. But when one of its members is implicated in the bombing of an evangelical church that kills its pastor, who publicly supported the quarantine initiative, Rios finds himself with a client suddenly facing the death penalty.

282 pages, Paperback

Published April 27, 2021

About the author

Michael Nava

39 books321 followers
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.

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5 stars
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25 (8%)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
Profile Image for Elena.
883 reviews109 followers
March 25, 2023
To say that I liked this book a lot might seem to imply that I enjoyed it and I’m not sure that’s the right way to describe my experience with this story. It was certainly interesting and, to the best of my knowledge, a realistic portrait of the time and place it’s set in, which means I spent half the time wanting to throw things at bigoted people’s heads. The other half of the time, I asked myself why the author seems to hate Henry so much, that he always has him
Despite all evidence to the contrary, I did like this book, the writing was as engaging as the rest of the series and the plot mostly well-crafted, even if the was a bit over the top. Not enough to really bother me, but the ending could’ve been stronger.
Another winner for the series, but I’m ready any time for something good and lasting coming Henry’s way. I mean it, any time. There’s no need to be shy.
Profile Image for Kaje Harper.
Author 83 books2,643 followers
June 3, 2021
The Henry Rios series has not only a great main character, but storylines that offer a window on a painful time for gay men in America, in California though the 1980s. In this book, we revisit a time right before a vote on a fictitious ballot measure that would allow the quarantine of everyone with HIV. In a meeting to organize opposition to the measure, Henry meets Josh Mandel, whom readers of the series know from subsequent books. He also encounters a range of activists, from the more pragmatic to the revolutionary QUEER group, who become integral to the story.

(Though modified for fiction, the ballot measure echoes Prop 64 that was on the CA ballot in 1986 - which would have declared AIDS an "infectious, contagious and easily communicable disease" under the state's health law, "thereby requiring that all cases of infection be reported to the authorities. It would prohibit people who had been exposed to the AIDS virus from working as teachers or food handlers, would permit school officials to bar students with the virus, would allow universal testing for it and, ultimately, would have permitted the state to confine--quarantine--those who tested positive" - it was defeated in the vote by the "no on 64" effort.)

The book opens, however, with the introduction and back story of another character. Dan - who is straight - found religion as the antidote to aimlessness in his youth, and is now the pastor of a church that is veering into conservative politics (against his preferences but steered by the church board he must listen to.) His current wife is the daughter of the church founder, but he has a lover and a son in his past. The back-and-forth-in-time opening is a bit convoluted, although it gives us important information about who Dan is and of people in his life that will play pivotal roles in the mystery.

For me, the story really gets going when we see Henry in the midst of the anger and determination and conflicts of the activist community, both with regard to "Prop 54" and with the issue of access to possibly life-saving medications for AIDS that the government is disinclined to fast-track or make available. Here is Henry at his idealistic best, trying to balance what is legal and what is right. And when a QUEER group activist is charged with arson and murder, Henry is the man to take his case, and try to work some kind of justice out of a desperate situation.

The politics, the corruption, religious conservative cruelty, and the relative impotence of a reviled minority against the majority power structures, are as timely and relevant today as they were in this look back in time. These stories manage the joint work of having us say "God, I remember, that was so scary/awful" and also "things haven't changed half as much as they should have." The author pulls us into the story and gives us fallible, human characters to watch as they navigate impossible choices.

The ending is a bit neat, given the deeply messy speaking-truth-to-power that precedes it - it feels satisfying, but a bit less real than all the struggles of the rest of the story. But it's always a joy to watch Henry using both his brains and his heart to do good in the world, while remaining believable and imperfect. He's one of my very favorite fictional characters.

I'm not sure if this book is intended to replace Goldenboy - the meeting with Josh differs between the two books, and some of the continuity conflict doesn't easily reconcile. I notice that in the new series listing, Howtown is listed as book 4, and Goldenboy is missing. I do know that I'll pick up whatever Nava decides to give us with Henry next, and I hope there is more backstory to be filled in before the satisfying ending of Rag and Bone.
Profile Image for LenaRibka.
1,462 reviews424 followers
June 20, 2021
4, 5 stars



Please more of Henry Rios, such a great character!..

An excellent new addition to one of my favourite series that offers significant insight into the history of the struggle for gay rights in the 1980s.
Profile Image for Ulysses Dietz.
Author 15 books709 followers
May 19, 2021
Lies with Man (Henry Rios book 8)
By Michael Nava
Amble Press, 2021
Five stars

I’m struggling with this review, so I figure I’d better make it clear up front that this is a wonderful book. It also is a stand-alone story, even though knowing Henry Rios’s full history from the other books will make the experience even richer. It’s a political thriller mixed with a series of tragic love stories, not all of which have completed their trajectory by the explosive finale.

“Lies with Man,” takes us back to the beginning of Michael Nava’s chronological starting point, the mid-1980s, when AIDS had become a scourge in what was then quaintly called the Lesbian and Gay Community; and had also emerged as a powerful tool of the Right to use against us. Henry is living in the sprawling house in the Hollywood Hills, left to him by his friend and AA mentor. He has just met Josh Mandel at a community meeting regarding a ballot proposition calling for the quarantine of any HIV-positive person for the protection of the general public (i.e. “innocent people”). (The proposition itself is fictitious, but relates to an actual proposition on the ballot in California in 1986.) Henry Rios is a player in this drama, acting as the lawyer for a rowdy crew of disorganized gay and lesbian protesters, of which Josh Mandel is a member. Henry’s counterpoint, tracked in a parallel story line, is a middle-aged evangelical pastor for a powerful fundamentalist congregation in Los Angeles. Both men have complicated backstories, which the author uses brilliantly to add richness and emotional texture to what evolves into a particularly ugly tale of murder and corruption.

How you read one of Michael Nava’s Henry Rios novels varies, I think, with your age. For a younger reader today, I guess these books offer a sharply-drawn, fascinating, disturbing insight into our history (what “our” means depending on how you identify yourself). For those of us in Nava’s generation, these books cut a little closer to the bone, dredging up memories of a time many of us have allowed to slip into the fog of the past. I have to note that there is an eerie echo of the politics of the last few years in “Lies with Man” that the author surely intends us to recognize. The political viciousness that emerged in the Reagan years has not, sadly, become of a thing of the past.

There is a chronological arc for the first seven of the Henry Rios books, which seems to come to some sort of emotional completion for their central character (at least as I interpreted it). History as Henry experiences it is messy and dark and offers no guarantees. Henry Rios is a man of deep compassion and surprising generosity of spirit. He is a consistent model of the damaged-but-good man, in chilling contrast to other men in the books who see themselves as good while in fact embodying the most profound sort of hypocritical evil. This most recent book breaks the chronological arc, doing what is called “retroactive continuity” in the world of television—filling in pieces of past history that we didn’t get in the earlier books.

I am intrigued by what Nava will mine from Henry’s past in future books. Personally, I want Henry to find happiness and peace. Somehow, I don’t think Michael Nava cares what I want, so I’ll settle for what he gives me.
Profile Image for Linda ~ they got the mustard out! ~.
1,766 reviews128 followers
December 14, 2022
It's so sad and disheartening to see some of these attitudes against LGBT rearing their ugly heads again and gaining traction in some segments of society. Like Henry points out here, defeating one proposition doesn't mean more won't come, doesn't mean they won't think of something else to try to segregate our society into the "acceptable" and the "unacceptable", all in the name of their loving God. 🙄

4 stars, because this is an important book and an important subject matter that's sadly still relevant today, even if AIDS isn't the hot button issue it used to be. Now it's trans and gender identity. Back then, it was internment camps to keep the HIV/AIDS infected away from everyone else. Now, it's bathroom laws. The irony is that those pearl clutchers would freak out if a transman actually used the women's restroom. 🙄🤦🏻‍♀️ Also, since I've had enough with this crowd over the last few years, I just sort of automatically distanced myself from the story as I was listening, and I think it didn't impact me as much as it otherwise would have as a result. I'm not going to take that out on the book though.

I was picturing something else for this book, since in Goldenboy, which this book kind of replaces, it sounded like Henry had a more hands-on influence on the campaign against Prop 54 than is actually shown here. Goldenboy actually took place after the events of this book, so I'm not sure why Nava decided to replace it entirely instead of just adding this as a new book like he did with Carved in Bone. Not that I'm complaining, since all that Hollywood nonsense in Goldenboy really did annoy me. Maybe it annoyed Nava too, lol.

I was also curious what he would do with Josh Mandel's intro to the series, and I am a little disappointed he didn't flesh that out more, like he did with Hugh Paris in Lay Your Sleeping Head. Though I did like the changes to Josh's background and how he and Henry now meet. He's a lot kinder, less hostile, but still trying to figure things out.

The mystery itself was interesting, though I was increasingly baffled that it took Henry so long to make the connections to the various threads. I guess he was too busy And I have to say, I was really disappointed that Nava recycled the ending from Goldenboy into this story. It didn't fit this character at all, and the ending didn't fit the story very well either. Since he went to all the trouble to write a new story, he should have also written an ending for it instead of using one from the other book. I'm really tempted to knock off a half-star and give this 3.5 star rating, but I'm leaving it at 4 stars for now.
Profile Image for Philip.
442 reviews47 followers
April 24, 2021
Most of the mysteries I read are cozy and I love that about them. Michael Nava writes literary mystery, so it took a few pages for me to switch gears and get into the complicated lives of these characters. What a joy it is reading a new Henry Rios. And how wonderful to read his back story with Josh. The book takes place in 1986, at the height of AIDS hysteria. Although part of the Rios series - Lies with Man can be read out of order, or on its own. I love how Nava humanized the characters for and against the ballot initiative to quarantine people living with AIDS. Well not all of them obviously. Rios continues to be deliciously angry, which we all had every right to be. In the end, there are several surprise reveals I didn't see coming. I love love love Henry Rios. I am so excited the next book will take place close to present day. So excited to see where Henry's life has taken him. Henry Rios original book 1 hailed from 1986. Lies with Man is part of a reimagining of the first three books - one rewrite and two new stories. 5 out of 5 for this literary mystery masterpiece and essential mystery series. My absolute favorite mystery series of all-time.
Profile Image for Rosa.
741 reviews6 followers
August 15, 2023
I've become a huge fan of Michael Nava's writing. I like the way he tell his stories and how authentic his characters felt. For a moment I was worried this was going to be like the second one and was going to break my heart again, in fact, I had to take a small break because there was a moment the book was a bit too much for me. But then, things started to move forward, the writing helped to balance those hard moments (there're a lot in here, but those were hard times) and I couldn't put the book down.
I highly recomend this book for the same reasons I recomended the one before this, we shouldn't forget. Now more than ever.
Thank you to my fellow BReaders for the company, I'm looking forward to you reaching certain point in the book...
Profile Image for John.
365 reviews14 followers
June 19, 2021
Not only another strong story but an important history lesson too. Recommended.
Profile Image for Jilles.
540 reviews9 followers
March 30, 2024
The amazing Michael Nava is back with another Henry Rios crime novel. In his last two books you get everything that made his earlier books so good, but with the history of the gay movement in church and politics as part of the plot and background for the story. Rios is one of the view characters you can't help falling in love with. And the writing by Nava is amazing, there is not a unauthentic word in his books. What I realized after finding out that in both this book and in Goldenboy, he meets and gets a relationship with Josh Mandell, this is actually a totally new book to replace Goldenboy in the series (Goldenboy also hasn't been reprinted by Nava). By comparing the two, this is the better novel, so much more mature, so much denser. So now we have 1. Carved In Bone, 2. Lay Your Sleeping Head, and 3. Lies With Man.
Profile Image for alyssa.
971 reviews196 followers
December 5, 2023
"Our minds want to take us to dark places, but we don't have to go. We can stay right here. And if we are going to fantasize about the future, why not fantasize about a happy one?"

[4.5] i wouldn't dare classify these books as romances, but Henry is a romantic in every sense of the word, in how he sees the world, in how he sees his relationships. he falls so hard and so fast. his heart bleeds.

this book is comparatively more out-there in the final stages and resolution with that neat & tidy bowtie when forced to stand amongst the others i've read, but it doesn't come close to changing the fact that i would pick up another hundred - so long as Michael Nava was at the helm penning the story. i simply can't get enough.
Profile Image for Cyndi.
704 reviews44 followers
February 16, 2024
4.5 stars - My tears of sadness from book #2 turned into tears of anger in this one. This book was absolutely amazing. It was eye opening in the most terrifying of ways. Henry Rios is fighting the good fight and he's got his gloves off. I wasn't 100% sold on the Hollywood ending (I would have been okay with ambiguity) and wished there was a little more effort put into the love story, but everything else was so good that those small complaints barely registered. I'm scared of what might happen next, but I'm going to find out anyway.
Profile Image for kn.
79 reviews3 followers
December 20, 2021
I NEED IT LIKE RIGHT NOW.

Michael you are a friggen genius. I don’t think I’ve ever been in love with a fictional character in a book as much as I love Henry. And the way you’ve weaved gay history, queer livelihoods, and the origins of North American gay culture and activism is just inspired. I feel really grateful that generations of gay men and women will be able to read and learn and connect with these stories for the rest of history. Thank you for giving that to us!
Profile Image for PaperMoon.
1,681 reviews73 followers
June 8, 2021
Another excellent addition to the Henry Rios series, just as with Carved in Bone, this new release is situated retrospectively (to sometime within Goldenboy) with a re-visioned first meeting between Henry and his young lover Josh Mandel. Set within an epic struggle between far right religio-political forces and an angry maligned/marginalized group fighting for their very lives - there are parallel story-lines ... a father's love desperately driving him down illegal avenues and a legal crusader's relentless mission to save his lover from a possible death sentence.

Apart from an engaging and action-driven plot, this book took me back to the heady days of my own young adulthood and to those early days of the AIDS hysteria/response - a mixture of nostalgic pleasure and outrage-infused memories. I've missed Henry and Josh's interactions and I really hope the author continues to give us new books featuring these two before those devastating events in The Death of Friends. 4.5 stars.
Profile Image for Mark Hiser.
534 reviews17 followers
May 25, 2021
History. 1986. California. Proposition 64 for the State of California appears on the ballot. If passed, it would restore AIDS to the list of communicable diseases. Tellingly, AIDS cases were already being reported but the proposition would also require persons identified as HIV+ to be named to Departments of Health.

Besides restoring AIDS to the communicable disease list, the initiative’s text also stated that “both [persons with HIV or AIDS] are subject to quarantine and isolation statutes and regulations” even though in 1983 the Center for Disease Control had determined how the virus was spread and had ruled out transmission by casual contact, air, surfaces, and food.

In short, given the prevalence of HIV and AIDS in the gay male community when compared with the straight population, Proposition 64 was clearly an anti-gay bill, not a health measure.

The bill was defeated on November 4, 1986 by a margin of 71% to 29%.

Lies with Man the eighth—and most recent--Henry Rios mystery novel by Michael Nava, is set within this historical context. Because it fills in gaps between earlier Henry Rios novels, Lies with Man could probably be billed as Book Three. However, as with all the Rios mysteries, readers need not read any of the other books.

Lies with Man opens in a hospital room where Wyatt, a young gay man with AIDS, is surrounded by his unmarried mother, Gwen, who is a nurse, and his biological father, Daniel, who is pastor at an evangelical church. Twenty years earlier, Daniel and Gwen had been lovers in 1968 San Francisco but parted ways before Wyatt’s birth.

Beyond the hospital’s walls, a right-wing Christian group has gained enough support to put on the ballot Proposition 54, an initiative that would give health officials the right to send persons to quarantine camps if diagnosed as being HIV+ or having AIDS. (Though based on the text of Proposition 64, Proposition 54 is fictional.)

Soon after arriving back in LA after secretly visiting Gwen and Wyatt in San Francisco, the board of Daniel’s church places him into a morally difficult situation. The board’s members do not know about Daniel’s past life with Gwen and Wyatt, but they are the overseers of a large, influential evangelical church that is legalistic, fundamentalist, and anti-gay. Daniel, however, has often inwardly struggled with the theology of his church but never opposed it outwardly. The board pushes him to actively support the initiative.

As November approaches, a gay activist group known as QUEER (Queers United to End Erasure and Repression) has intensified its nonviolent actions to persuade voters to turn vote down the initiative. When one of the group’s members is charged with bombing Daniel’s church and killing him, Henry Rios finds himself defending the man.

Lies with Man is the first new Henry Rios mystery in many years. It is a complex and thought-provoking book that benefits from Nava’s growth as a writer. Even though Nava has not written a bitter book, he does take a position even while humanizing persons on all sides of the debate.

In Lies with Man, Nava shows readers the power of love especially when compared with the ignorance and fear that keeps many of the Christians in his novel from love. Nava also shows how some religious people use God to excuse their fear and bigotry, and how others use God for their own political power and personal. Furthermore, Nava shows how corrupt organizations advance their own agenda by using those who fear and hate. In short, Lies with Man is a literary mystery, one with nuance that makes readers think even while being entertained.

Though the book is not only focused on the conflict between many Christians and persons who are LGBTQ, it is that point of view upon which I wish to comment.

While reading Lies with Man, I was often struck by how little some Christian denominations have changed over the decades.

For example, despite individual congregations that fully accept and include persons who are LGBTQ, the United Methodist Church will not ordain “practicing homosexuals” nor allow clergy to perform the marriage ceremony for same-sex couples. It also declares that "homosexual practice" is "incompatible with Christian teaching," a position first included in the denomination’s Book of Discipline in 1972. As tensions have intensified, the UMC is close to splitting.

The Roman Catholic Church says that homosexuality is not a sin, but that same-sex activity is contrary to natural law and is a moral disorder. It also opposes same-sex marriage.

Most Pentecostal churches consider homosexuality to be a sin saying "...there is absolutely no affirmation of homosexual behavior found anywhere in Scripture. Rather, the consistent sexual ideal is chastity for those outside a monogamous heterosexual marriage and fidelity for those inside such a marriage. There is also abundant evidence that homosexual behavior, along with illicit heterosexual behavior, is immoral and comes under the judgment of God."

Lies with Man may well be Nava’s best book. Not only does it entertain and satisfy as a mystery in the tradition of LA noir, but it also tears at the heart and compels readers to think and reflect upon their own views and actions. Its look at the conflict between many Christian denominations and persons who are LGBTQ is as relevant today as it lays bare the deep hurt churches have caused persons who are LGBTQ.

I highly recommend reading Lies with Man. I could not put it down. I felt a sense of loss as I came to the end of the last page. I only hope we do not have to wait so long for another Henry Rios mystery.
Profile Image for Gabi.
151 reviews
July 20, 2024
This is a fantastic gay fiction series set in the 80s.
I’m a huge fan of Navas writing and I’m happy there are 5 more books to dive into!

We looked into each other’s eyes. Some ancients believed eyes emit beams of light and this is how we see, each eye a little sun illuminating the world. Others postulated that eyes are windows into the soul— the lamp of the body— illuminating not what is outside us but what is inside. At that moment, it seemed our eyes were illuminating both. I saw Josh and I felt seen— seen, accepted, accepting as our bodies, cast from the same mold, engaged from foot to forehead so that, for a moment, I could not tell where mine left off and his began.
Profile Image for Eric Peterson.
Author 1 book4 followers
April 22, 2021
This was the first novel by Nava I’ve read, but it didn’t matter that it was the eighth book to feature Henry Rios as its protagonist; it read like a stand-alone story. And though the book isn’t a mystery (you know who did what the whole time), there were a couple of twists and turns that knocked me sideways, and kept me reading lost past the time I should have put the book down and gone to sleep. In addition to Rios: defense attorney, gay, Mexican-American, sober, romantic, and brilliant — I was really taken with the characters of Dan (who I started out liking before he really disappointed me) and his wife Jessica (who I started out despising before she startled me). This is a gripping story, played out against a gritty Los Angeles during the worst of the AIDS epidemic, on the side of justice without being preachy about it, and nearly impossible to put down once you’ve begun.
Author 17 books7 followers
May 31, 2021
Nava is a natural born writer and a meticulous plotter. Lies With Man never travels to the obvious places. Like any good mystery it is full of twists and surprises, but unlike lesser genre fiction, the surprises don't seem contrived, never a twist merely for the sake of throwing the reader off balance. Instead, they are organic. The story is replete with pain and complexity. Even the antagonists are human and fallible, and while Nava doesn't excuse their missteps, he makes us understand how they arrived at this sorry pass. Overall, the writing is nimble and superior to the plot-centric books of the genre. Bravo.
Profile Image for Sarah-Hope.
1,290 reviews169 followers
June 19, 2022
CW: AIDS, homophobia

Michael Nava's Henry Rios mystery series is new to me—and, based on this title, I'm going to be ploughing through every bit of it available as soon as possible. Nava has won numerous awards for this series, which is set in the 1980s and features a gay Chicano defense attorney. Rios works in Los Angeles, picking up public defender cases as he builds his own practice.

If you have any sense of recent history, the intersection of 80s and gay will bring up all kinds of memories, many of them infuriating and agonizing: the onset of the AIDS epidemic, the way the disease enabled homophobes and religious bigots, the beginnings of organizations like Act Up and the underground networks smuggling not-yet-FDA-approved drugs into the U.S. to make them accessible to people with AIDS, law enforcement hostility to the queer community, and struggles over issues of race and gender within that community. In 1986, California's Proposition 64, which would have required reporting of AIDS infections and established a quarantine system for those testing positive, was rejected by voters. Nava uses a fictionalized version of that ballot initiative, Proposition 54, as the starting place for this novel.

I don't want to say too much about the plot except that if you were in California in the 80s the cast of characters will be familiar and the relationships among them are every bit as complex and ugly in Lies with Man as they were in real life. Depending on your experiences during that time, this novel may strike you as cathartic or unbearable. I appreciated a novel featuring a gay man who was fighting the injustices of his time��but these injustices were real and left hundreds of thousands dead, and those who lived through that time and lost lovers, friends, and community members may want to get to know Henry Rios through one of Nava's other titles.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via EdelweissPlus; the opinions are my own.
Profile Image for Steven Hoffman.
176 reviews4 followers
August 12, 2021
THIS ONE FALLS A BIT SHORT
I've loved the Henry Rios series. So have a lot of people as Nava has gained much critical acclaim for this work. I binge read the last three of these sexy lawyer adventures last fall and was sorry to see him go. Then was thrilled to see Nava was putting out one more story this year, his eighth book in the series, Lies With Man. This one seems to be a prequel to the others as in it Henry Rios, our hero, meets his lover, Josh, for the first time. Josh made frequent appearances in Nava's previous Rios novels.

So why do I think this last book is not quite up to Nava's previous efforts? To me, it just seemed to be very two dimensional. The plot was extremely predictable, although Nava throws a couple of minor twists in at the end. With a couple of exceptions involving Henry, of course, and some supporting characters, the rest of the characters are either "good guys" or "bad" and not much in between. Rios' take on the LAPD is that there's only just a very few good cops, but the system and most all in it are all corrupt homophobes out to destroy all who don't see life their way.

Also, I am no fan of the religious right and was a young adult in the 80s at the time this novel takes place. I remember vividly the so called religious right, Jerry Falwell and his "Moral Majority," creating its culture war on humanism and blaming AIDS on the atrocious acts of depraved godless gay people. I came of age in that ugly time and carried around a lot of my own self-loathing guilt. However, in this saga, Christians are just down right the devil's spawn! Nava draws very few distinctions between any of them regardless of denomination although the Evangelicals bear the brunt. Christians are evil, period. Only one of these supporting characters show some tolerance and understanding, but Nava chooses to have the Christians do away with him for the most cynical and political of reasons which is at the center of the story.

I always felt Nava writing showed a marvelous nuanced in his Henry Rios series. This one just felt to heavy handed to me. Underneath the story line, I felt that Nava wanted to rant about the ugliness that was the 1980s for gay people, lest the world forget.
Profile Image for Bizzy.
521 reviews
August 16, 2024
3.5/5 - Although I enjoyed this book, it’s the weakest of the series for me, and I’m not sure rewriting it was the right choice.

A caveat here is that I read this book out of order because Amazon’s series order is incorrect (this is book 3, not book 8), so that might have affected my enjoyment a bit, but I don’t think it had a big impact.

As with book 2, I didn’t find the non-Henry POVs particularly effective, and it was worse in this book because instead of just one other POV, there were several. Some of these seemed to exist solely to give the reader information that Henry couldn’t easily learn, but they spoiled the mystery and didn’t add enough to the story to make up for it. Like Bill in book 2, Daniel in this book never felt like a real person. He was another archetype Nava wanted to explore so he has the traits and backstory necessary for the themes Nava wanted to draw from him (how people struggle to reconcile religious homophobia with their unconditional love of a specific person), but those traits don’t feel founded in any of the experiences he narrates for us. I think his story would have worked better if Henry had been the one to try to reconcile Daniel’s conflicting traits as part of Henry’s investigation, because this would have made Daniel’s background feel less contrived and would have left key questions open for the reader to resolve in a way that made sense to them. This book often felt like Nava was trying too hard to have all the answers.

Similarly, I didn’t find Henry’s romance with Josh convincing because so much of their early relationship is not described. We know they have long phone calls where they learn about each other, but the reader isn’t privy to those, so we don’t get to know Josh and don’t see the reasons Henry falls in love with him.

Another issue is that this book does almost nothing to tie up the loose ends of book 2, and I don’t understand why so much work was done to introduce Larry as a character in book 2 if he wasn’t going to be in this book at all. Why bother developing him as the reason Henry moved to LA if he isn’t present in any future books? And for that matter, why spend time in book 2 on Henry’s struggle to rebuild his career if his career in book 3 is firmly established and Henry never worries about it? Rather than filling in the blanks in the series, book 2 creates new ones.

On the positive side, I thought the AIDS quarantine bill was a really effective way to develop the political and identity-related themes of the series, and I liked that Nava used that plot point to illustrate different approaches to political action without making a judgment on which approach is the “correct” one. I also like that he addressed religious homophobia without overgeneralizing about religion. I also enjoy Henry’s unapologetic hatred for the LAPD and his distrust of cops in general, because so many mystery series treat law enforcement as an unambiguous force for good and justice, which would not work at all in this series. The criminal defense lawyers I know all hate cops and I wouldn’t be able to take Henry seriously as a character if he didn’t feel similarly.

I know from the blurbs that this book has a totally different mystery from the previous version (Goldenboy), and I think that part of the rewrite was successful because the mystery is good and likely (based on the blurbs) ties in better with the rest of the series than the previous version did. But 1990s Nava was more confident in his ability to tell a story solely through Henry’s POV, and I wish that adding more POVs wasn’t one of the ways Nava “improved” the series when he returned to it in 2019-2021.
Profile Image for Steven.
653 reviews42 followers
September 12, 2024
Another 5 stars! This legal thriller is so believable that it reads like true crime.
Profile Image for Kris Sellgren.
1,067 reviews25 followers
April 3, 2022
I used to love Nava’s mystery novels about gay criminal defense attorney Henry Rios, but he stopped writing them. Now I discover that he’s writing them again. Hurray! Lies With Man has a twisty, political plot set in the 1980’s, when AIDS was devastating the gay community. Nava has a deft hand in sketching his characters. He explores the complexities of being an evangelical Christian with a gay child you love. This inspires me to re-read his old Rios mysteries and check out the new ones mm
Profile Image for Vajda.
4 reviews
June 28, 2021
God bless Michael for giving us Henry! I hope Mr. Nava continues. I need more stories about Henry.
Profile Image for Eugene Galt.
Author 1 book42 followers
May 26, 2021
Part crime novel, part historical fiction about the AIDS crisis, part account of the evolution of romantic and familial relationships, this book grabs your attention from the start with its intriguing plot and its equally intriguing characters.

Nava depicts characters on both sides as realistic, flawed human beings with interesting and credible backstories, when so many authors would have been tempted to show them as either saints or mustache-twirling villains. In particular, he depicts a diverse array of gay male characters with a degree of psychological realism that other authors would do well to emulate.

He points out aspects of gay life and of life in general that so many pretend not to notice. For example, he notes the purity tests that members of the right-kind-of-gay community use to separate the sheep from the goats. He also takes a refreshingly heterodox view of the extent to which members of traditionally marginalized groups have historically been able to trust those in power.

In discussing Christianity, a subject on which many other gay authors rely on stereotypes and pop-cultural osmosis, Nava shows that he has done his homework. In fact, I am sure he could pass an ideological Turing test as a member of a church such as that depicted in the novel.

However, a few things mar the book for me. Toward the end, the plot bumps up against the edges of willing suspension of disbelief. Also, the book includes anachronisms and other misstatements.
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