Title: The Burning Plain (#6 in the Henry Rios series) Author: Michael Nava Published by: Putnam, 1997 ISBN: 0-399-14310-6 [hardcover, 305 pages]
The hero of Michael Nava's books, Henry Rios, is a gay Mexican-American lawyer whose strengths and weaknesses resonate deeply as he traverses the often daunting personal and public terrain of Los Angeles. In The Burning Plain, Rios, still reeling from the death of his former lover, unwisely becomes involved with a young man whom he had defended on trumped-up burglary charges. When the man is brutally murdered a few hours after leaving Rios' house, a trail of circumstantial evidence leads an unscrupulous police detective to Rios' doorstep, and when a second young man, and then a third, are found dead, Rios must fight not only to exonerate himself, but to save his very life.For powerful forces are at work here - an intricate web of blackmail, betrayal, corruption, and violence that reaches from the criminal courthouse to the studio lots to the mayor's office. And one death more won't make a great deal of difference.
Nava presents a nightmare vision of Los Angeles, filled with brilliantly evocative characters and prose of surgical precision.
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