Terrific production, walled off by Audible. ( )

By the end of Carved in Bone, I liked the book and was glad I had read it. Along the way, however, I did not feel very well disposed toward it and might have quit reading it if had I not been reading it as a ‘Buddy Read.”
. Reading it as a mystery story disappointed me, even though there is a genuine mystery to be solved. There really is not very much mystery in the book The first chapters of the book, however, spend little time on the mystery or anything related to it. The transition from chapter 3 to chapter 4 is so rough, that my reading buddy and I both had to go back to earlier chapters to be sure we were reading the same book.
The story involves Bill Ryan who discovers at about age 18 that he is gay. His father catches him having sex with his friend Marco and brutalizes him so much that he requires a lengthy stay in the hospital and even has his spleen removed.
When he emerges from the hospital, his mother gives him a little money, takes him to the bus station and tells him he is no longer a part of their family.
Bill ended up in San Francisco full of bitterness and shame. Throughout the book, he is never able to fully overcome his own demons nor the demonic judgments of his family. His Catholic upbringing helped him to go deeper into the depths of shame and self-hatred, something many of us who grew up Catholic will recognize even as we continue our own battles to overcome the damages. (Being Catholic is a life-sentence).
In San Francisco, Bill is lucky enough to find a mentor and quasi-savior in Waldo, a comfortable with himself queen, who guides him through the perils of learning the streets and facing his own sexuality.
Bill is never able to end the shame his family and the church assigned him and engaged in all of the typical self destructive behaviors that include reckless and promiscuous sex together with self-humiliation, cocaine, and alcohol.
Waldo does all he can to help him through this stage.
At last, Bill meets Nick, an innocent man 10 years younger than he is, and the two fall in love.
Bill never escapes his self-shame sufficiently to believe that Nick could love him and be committed to him, now and again returning to self-destructiveness and pushing Nick away.
Henry Rios, the lawyer-detective character author Michael Nava uses in his crime novels, enters the scene when Bill is found dead, and his lover, Nick, nearly dead. the death, however, has been ruled as “accidental.”
Bill left behind an insurance policy worth $100,000 with Nick as the beneficiary. The insurance company, like all insurance companies, is reluctant to pay the claim and hires Rios to do a deep investigation of the case.
The setting for all of this occurs during the early years of the AIDS epidemic and that circumstance has a great deal to do with the story.
I found myself rather liking the book in the end, but it took me between 1/2 and 3/4 of it before I did.
The writing is otherwise pretty good and the book offers “teachings’ both on alcoholism and AIDS that resonate well with the storyline and also offer insights to readers.
I had read one other Nava novel and recall that it, too, started off slow. I have yet another already on my shelf. Whether or not I like the next one that I already own will have everything to do with whether I read more or not. ( )