In the course of the series, Nava grew from a competent mystery novelist to a writer of unusual insight.Īnd over the course of the series, Rios develops in convincing yet unpredictable ways. As Christopher Bram has observed, the series develops into â€œa large-scale moral portrait of one manâ€™s life over fifteen years.” In the series, Rios is gradually revealed to be more complex and more introspective than most fictional detectives, and his internal struggles and his often tortured relationships with others provide the major interest of the books and lift them above their formulaic genre. What sets them â€” especially the last five â€” apart from much detective fiction, in addition to their highly textured and allusive prose, is the depth with which Nava probes character and motivation. Indeed, the novels are less plot-driven than character-driven. The seven novels are more than puzzles to be unraveled. In his acclaimed seven-novel series featuring Chicano lawyer Henry Rios â€”Â The Little Death (1986), Goldenboy(1988) ,Â How Town(1990), The Hidden LawÂ (1992),Â The Death of FriendsÂ (1996), Â The Burning Plain(1997), and Â Rag and Bone (2001) â€” Nava established himself as a worthy successor to Joseph Hansen, who pioneered the gay mystery novel in the 1970s by presenting for the first time in the crime genre a rich variety of LGBT characters, unsensationally, as individuals with understandable desires, triumphs, and frustrations. In the 1980s, Nava emerged as a leading practitioner of the gay mystery novel. In a major LGBT literary event, 30 years after its original issue, Michael Nava has published a revision–or more accurately, a re-imagining–of his first mystery novel, The Little Death. The new publication, entitled Lay Your Sleeping Head, is a mature novel that transcends the expectations of the mystery genre. “Little Death” Returns As “Lay Your Sleeping Head,” A Work Of Depth and Maturity

Rag and Bone by Michael Nava