Michael Nava - A Detective Unlike Any Other in American Noir

Michael Nava is the author of a groundbreaking series of eight novels featuring gay, Latino criminal defense lawyer Henry Rios who The New Yorker, called “a detective unlike any previous protagonist in American noir.” The New York Times Book Review has called Nava “one of our best” writers. He is also the author of an acclaimed historical novel, The City of Palaces, set in Mexico City at the beginning of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. As our Author of the Day, Nava tells us all about his book, Rag and Bone.

Please give us a short introduction to what Rag and Bone is about.

Rag and Bone is the seventh book in a mysteries series featuring Henry Rios, a gay criminal defense lawyer, that the New York Times called "exceptional."

At the beginning of Rag and Bone, Rios suffers a heart attack while in court. His estranged sister, Elena, flies down to Los Angeles to take care of him. She reveals she had a daughter she gave up for adoption. After she returns home to Oakland, her daughter, Vicky, and her nine-year-old son year Angel appear at her house asking for refuge from an abusive husband. Ultimately, Vicky and Angel turn up on Rios's doorstep where Rios bonds with Angel but not so much with his niece. When Vicky is accused of murdering her husband, Rios takes on her defense. Vicky wants to plead guilty, but Rios suspects she's trying to protect the real killer and sets out to discover if he's right.

What inspired you to start a series featuring a gay, Latino criminal defense lawyer?

The classic noir protagonist -- like Philip Marlow and Lew Archer -- is an outsider. Despised by respectable society, he actually embodies the virtues respectable society pretends to honor -- like loyalty, decency, and courage -- but rarely practices. Respectable society also calls upon him to clean up its sordid messes, giving him a ringside seat to its lies, secrets, and hypocrisies. I saw parallels between that fictional character and my own experience as a gay man. I too felt the sting of social condemnation while experiencing myself as a decent, moral human being. I also felt like an outsider in an often hypocritical society. In the Rios novels, I explore those parallels and wrap them up in what I hope are compelling stories.

Tell us more about Henry Rios - what makes him tick?

His sense of being an outsider inspires him to defend and protect other vulnerable people. He's not under any illusion about the criminal justice system that he operates in, he knows there are different standards depending on your social status, but he is nonetheless committed to trying to get some measure of justice for society's underdogs. As one reviewer said about the series, "Nava’s mysteries are faithful to the conventions of the genre, but they are set apart by their insight, compassion, and sense of social justice."

Was there something in particular that inspired the story for Rag and Bone?

I wanted to explore the idea of family, both the families we're born into and the families we create for ourselves from our friends. Rios was brutally rejected by his immigrant father because he was gay and has lived with that rejection into adulthood. In Rag and Bone, I wanted him to achieve some kind of reconciliation with his past which he does through his surviving family, his sister, his niece and especially with Angel, his nine-year-old grandnephew in whom he sees himself as a child.

Besides writing, what other secret skills do you have?

I have a law degree from Stanford and I had a 30-plus year law career. I'm also a decent cook.

Please tell us more about the cover and how it came about.

The cover was designed by my brilliant cover designer, Ann McMann, who has designed all the covers of the recently reissued Rios novels. So, you have the profile of an adult man and then the profile of the child. In the context of the novel, it has a double meaning: the child is both Rios's grandnephew Angel, appealing to him for protection, but it is also Rios as a child who appeals to his grown-up self for compassion and understanding.

Why did you start the final installment of this series with a heart attack?

In previous novels, Rios has endured the ravages of the AIDS epidemic that took the life of his friends and the man he loved. At the beginning of Rag and Bone, he is literally broken-hearted. A the end, his heart has been healed through his relationships with his sister, niece, grandnephew and a new lover, John DeLeon.

Can this book be read as a standalone or do you need to read the other books in the series first? How does it tie in with the other books?

All the books can be read as standalone stories; I put whatever backstory the reader needs from past novels into them, but each is complete without having read the previous books. This book brings Rios through a dark time to a hopeful one.

What do you hope readers will take away from this story?

I hope they will enjoy the mystery, of course, because one of my jobs as a mystery writer is to entertain and I take that very seriously. I also hope they will be moved by this tale of a wounded man finding healing through love.

What did you have the most fun with when writing this book?

Definitely it was creating the character of Angel, a little boy who is brave and wise beyond his years but also a child in need of love and protection.

Do you have a favorite line from the book, and can you explain what that line means to you?

Well, three lines. Elena is talking to Henry and says: "Isn't that what love seems like, Henry? A miracle? Something that strikes out of nowhere and transforms our life."

That's pretty much what the book is about.

What are you working on right now?

I'm going backwards through the series to fill a couple of chronological holes. In 2019 I published Carved in Bone which takes in 1984, fifteen years before Rag and Bone. Now I'm working on a sequel to Carved in Bone, which takes place in 1986. Once I fill those gaps, I'll bring Rios into the present time.

Where can our readers discover more of your work or interact with you?

The easiest ways are through my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/MichaelNavaWriter/ or through my website http://michaelnavawriter.com/.  I also have a podcast.