About Boystown 3: Two Nick Nowak Novellas
by Marshall Thornton
196 pages / 57000 words
ISBN: 978-1-61040-236-1
Ebook zipped file contains -
html, lit, Adobe and Sony optimized pdf, prc, epub, and paperback
Private Investigator Nick Nowak is back in two novella length mysteries
set in Chicago during the early 1980s. In Little Boy Boom, Nick’s car
explodes when a thief attempts to steal it. Realizing the bomb was meant for
him, Nick sets out to discover who wants him dead only to find that the list
of possible suspects is longer than he’d like. When he begins to run out of
suspects he wonders if the bomb was truly meant for him.
In Little Boy Tenor, Nick is asked to find the murderer of a church choir’s
star tenor, while at the same time his friend Ross asks him to find out the
truth behind his lover, Earl Silver’s mysterious death. As he juggles the
two cases, he becomes increasingly disturbed by what he learns.
Review
CB Potts, author of Rockhounds and More Rockhounds, writes: Nice
people always make me want to do bad things.
Nick Nowak is back in Boystown 3, and this time the hard-boiled
detective has his work cut out for him. Someone planted a bomb in Nick's
car - and that's only the first explosion in this fast paced noir yarn.
While investigating who's trying to kill him, Nick also has to figure
out how to dump his live-in boyfriend Harker and return to the love of
his life, Daniel. Only Harker's inexplicably hard to let go of. Thorton
delivers a new level of emotional depth and intensity in this volume: if
you want your heartstrings tugged, this is the book to do it. And if
you're in the mood for some steamy stolen moments, compelling mystery,
and fantastic, taut writing, this is the book to do it. Boystown 3
delivers, in spades!
Sample
Everyone lies. They lie to the people they love;
they lie to themselves. Once you admit it, it’s not such a hard thing to
live with. What is hard to live with is how far people will go to keep their
lies alive.
Reverend Edward Pepper was a fussy little man. He sat uncomfortably in the
guest chair across from my desk, looking around my office as though he
wanted to take a rag to it and wipe up all the dust. Of course, I wouldn’t
allow that. I was fond of the dust.
He was dressed in a black shirt with a clerical collar. Over that, he wore a
short woolen jacket that was now making him sweat. It was May and the
weather was hot one day, cold the next. That day had begun cold and quickly
heated up. I’d asked if he wanted to hang the coat on the hook behind my
door but he’d declined. He was a small man, wiry and tight. He seemed on the
verge of shaking. With his white blond hair and his anxious blood-shot eyes
he reminded me of a rabbit. A pretty rabbit, maybe, but a rabbit all the
same. Even his nose was pink. He’d been in my office for ten minutes and I
hadn’t been able to find out why he was there.
“How did you find me, Reverend Pepper?” I asked.
“We have a choir. They’re good. Quite good. They perform every Sunday
morning on The Towering Hour. Have you seen it?”
“The Towering Hour? No, I generally sleep in on Sunday mornings.”
“Oh. Of course,” he said. He’d already identified me as a heathen. I hoped
he wouldn’t try to change that. I liked being a heathen.
He hadn’t answered my question, so I asked it in a different way. “Did
someone in the choir recommend me?”
“Yes, I mean, no. I mean they called around until they found someone who
could recommend some like you.”
“Someone like me?” I suspected I knew what he meant but I wanted him to say
it. “Why were you looking for someone like me?”
“Gregory was shot, you see. Gregory Dane. Outside his apartment building.
About a month ago.” I kept an expectant look on my face, hoping he’d give me
more details. It worked. He went on, “Gregory had the most beautiful voice.
When he sang it was like listening to an angel. Everyone liked him. We can’t
figure out why--”
“I still don’t understand why you came to me.”
“You’re uniquely qualified to find Gregory’s killer.”
I took pity on him finally and guessed, “Gregory was gay.”
“Yes,” he said, sitting back in his chair as though relieved he wasn’t going
to have to use the word himself.
“And you think something about Gregory’s being gay is what got him killed?”
“It must have.”
There was something about the good Reverend I didn’t like. It might have
been his nervous little rabbit ways. Or, his unwillingness to come out and
say what he meant. Or, his assumption that being gay got Gregory Dane
killed, I don’t know. But I didn’t like him so I said something that was a
little on the untruthful side, “I’m sure the Chicago police can handle the
case.”
“I don’t think so,” the Reverend said. “They’re already making mistakes.”
“Yeah? What mistakes have they made?” I asked.
“They found a gun in a trash bin about three blocks from where Gregory
lived. They say it’s the gun that killed him. The gun is registered to me.”
“Gregory was killed with a gun you own?”
“No, that’s not what I said. It’s not what I said at all.”
It certainly sounded like what he’d said.
“You see what I mean?” he went on. “The police aren’t doing a good job.”
“I’m afraid, I don’t see,” I said honestly.
“I’ve never owned a gun in my life.”