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Loves Last Chance: A Nigel and Nicky Mystery
Fate has strange and wonderful plans for wisecracking Nigel Adams and cynical, aristocratic Nicky Borja, who are accidentally thrown together in a Tuscany villa, where they have both fled to escape from life and its heartbreaks. But just as a fiery romance is kindled from oil and water, Nicky and Nigel discover that a friend they recently met, the publishing heiress Evelyn VanDeventer Iversen, has been drowned in a remote Arizona lake while camping with her new and much younger husband. Suddenly, the newly-in-love and eager-for-adventure pair find themselves in the deserts of Utah and Arizona on the trail of the truth in this delightfully poignant and funny blend of mystery and romance.
Krandall Kraus is the author of The President's Son and Bardo and is at work on the second Nigel and Nicky Mystery.
Krandall Kraus is the author of The President's Son and Bardo and is at work on the second Nigel and Nicky Mystery.
- GenresLGBT
328 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 20, 2016
Okay, so I’m obsessed with old movies. So shoot me. There’s a moment in Old Acquaintance (a Bette Davis/Miriam Hopkins vehicle about rival novelists) where a lady journalist in an unfortunate hat (name anyone?) tells the Davis character, “At least when you do write a book, it’s a gem. None of this grinding them out like sausages.” (Or words to that effect. The Hopkins character promptly offers to cut her throat for her.) Grinding them out is the point. These days there are shelves and shelves of gay murder mysteries, all of them promising to be exciting and stylish and witty. Go-go boys solve crimes. So do party planners and stylists. And bartenders. Let’s not forget the bartenders. How did this subgenre get to be old hat so quickly? Didn’t it skip a step? Or a whole bunch of steps?
For detective fiction, the period just after World War II proved especially fertile. Numerous staple characters sprouted, notably the Poison Ivy type, a distorted reflection of all those dames who resisted relinquishing their jobs to the returning GIs. Male characters, profoundly disturbed by this “betrayal,” devolved into the original hardboiled dicks, the Sam Spades, the Phillip Marlowes. Cynical loners all, they remained secretly and bitterly romantic at heart – the kind of people who could flourish only during a period of cultural malaise … in a world where old rules no longer applied.
Kraus sets Love’s Last Chance in a similar disaster era, i.e., the 1990s, and his main characters seem as rootless and disaffected as any Lost Generation wanderers. Yet their most direct literary forbearers – Nick and Nora Charles – qualify as perhaps the most lighthearted sleuths in all detective fiction. (Admittedly, they’re better known from the various films than from the single excellent novel.) Gifted amateurs, no less alienated than their professional P.I. peers, Nick and Nora were isolated by wealth and privilege (as well as by an alcoholism as unapologetic as Dashiell Hammett’s own). They fought, they loved, they drank and solved crimes, and they were witty as hell. Enter Nigel and Nicky.
As with the Hammett characters, money is no object: they meet (cute) in a chateau in Italy, dash to San Francisco (consummating somewhere mid-Atlantic), and shortly find themselves in Arizona, investigating the case of an aging heiress who winds up at the bottom of a lake. Much of the repartee, while it may lack Hammett’s gritty edge, distinctly recalls the banter between Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief. It’s a lesser glamour, but glamour nonetheless. In fact, there’s an old movie quality evident throughout the novel, replete with gorgeous sets and a colorful supporting cast. For Nigel, profoundly depressed at the beginning of the book, Nicky turns out to be just what the doctor ordered. Though purist devotees of the genre may find that the romance slows the plot, it proves impossible to resist the story of HIV+ sleuths who give each other the courage to live and love again. (Early on, Nicky informs Nigel that he wants “a run of the play” contract, and any gay man who can’t identify the film source needs to turn in his card: now.) As for the alcohol, Nicky explains, “Mostly I drink to make life more like a movie.”
Perhaps Myrna Loy would have expressed it with more panache, but wasn’t that always the case?
For detective fiction, the period just after World War II proved especially fertile. Numerous staple characters sprouted, notably the Poison Ivy type, a distorted reflection of all those dames who resisted relinquishing their jobs to the returning GIs. Male characters, profoundly disturbed by this “betrayal,” devolved into the original hardboiled dicks, the Sam Spades, the Phillip Marlowes. Cynical loners all, they remained secretly and bitterly romantic at heart – the kind of people who could flourish only during a period of cultural malaise … in a world where old rules no longer applied.
Kraus sets Love’s Last Chance in a similar disaster era, i.e., the 1990s, and his main characters seem as rootless and disaffected as any Lost Generation wanderers. Yet their most direct literary forbearers – Nick and Nora Charles – qualify as perhaps the most lighthearted sleuths in all detective fiction. (Admittedly, they’re better known from the various films than from the single excellent novel.) Gifted amateurs, no less alienated than their professional P.I. peers, Nick and Nora were isolated by wealth and privilege (as well as by an alcoholism as unapologetic as Dashiell Hammett’s own). They fought, they loved, they drank and solved crimes, and they were witty as hell. Enter Nigel and Nicky.
As with the Hammett characters, money is no object: they meet (cute) in a chateau in Italy, dash to San Francisco (consummating somewhere mid-Atlantic), and shortly find themselves in Arizona, investigating the case of an aging heiress who winds up at the bottom of a lake. Much of the repartee, while it may lack Hammett’s gritty edge, distinctly recalls the banter between Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief. It’s a lesser glamour, but glamour nonetheless. In fact, there’s an old movie quality evident throughout the novel, replete with gorgeous sets and a colorful supporting cast. For Nigel, profoundly depressed at the beginning of the book, Nicky turns out to be just what the doctor ordered. Though purist devotees of the genre may find that the romance slows the plot, it proves impossible to resist the story of HIV+ sleuths who give each other the courage to live and love again. (Early on, Nicky informs Nigel that he wants “a run of the play” contract, and any gay man who can’t identify the film source needs to turn in his card: now.) As for the alcohol, Nicky explains, “Mostly I drink to make life more like a movie.”
Perhaps Myrna Loy would have expressed it with more panache, but wasn’t that always the case?
March 23, 2013
SlashReader: 'Love's Last Chance', was a book that left me wanting more of it, more of the characters, more of the series, just more. On a basic level this is a romance/murder mystery, which gives it some fun twists.
One of the things that I loved about this book was the authors wonderfully quirky sense of humor. That came across beautifully through Nicky's character. Despite the fact that this is a murder mystery I would not describe it as being a 'fast book' at least not in the beginning. However, it is well written with endearing characters that drawn you along through the story.
Once I got into this story, I couldn't put it down.
One of the things that I loved about this book was the authors wonderfully quirky sense of humor. That came across beautifully through Nicky's character. Despite the fact that this is a murder mystery I would not describe it as being a 'fast book' at least not in the beginning. However, it is well written with endearing characters that drawn you along through the story.
Once I got into this story, I couldn't put it down.
November 7, 2008
Uhm... Good sex scene. I like it, but it's not "excellent" literature by any means. Just a bit of gay-themed fun and mystery.
July 24, 2012
A fun read with interesting characters. Having lived in many of the locales, it brought back nice memories. I'd highly recommend this book.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews