From the Ashes

Boystown #6

by Marshall Thornton

It’s winter 1984. Private Investigator Nick Nowak has allowed his life to fall to pieces: He’s stopped taking cases, given up his apartment and taken a job as a bartender at a sleazy joint tucked under the El. All he wants to do is stay hidden and lick his wounds after the death of his lover, Detective Bert Harker. But when the least likely person in the world shows up at the bar and asks him to take a new case, he finds himself investigating the very unsuspicious death of a priest. Nick is convinced he’s wasting his time until the clues begin to add up to something entirely unsuspected.

Genres: Mystery, M M Romance, Historical, Crime, LGBT, Audiobook, Fiction

237 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 1, 2013

About the author

Three-time Lambda Award-winning author, Marshall Thornton is best known for the Boystown and Pinx Video mystery series. Other novels include the erotic comedy The Perils of Praline, or the Amorous Adventures of a Southern Gentleman in Hollywood, Desert Run and Full Release. Marshall has an MFA in screenwriting from UCLA, where he received the Carl David Memorial Fellowship and was recognized in the Samuel Goldwyn Writing awards.

Member Mystery Writers of America

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Reviews

[Shile (Hazard's Version) on-hiatus · Rating 5 out of 5]

5++++++ stars



Some people are like orchids: delicate, easily bruised, wilted by a chill breeze. Others are more like weeds: stubborn, hard to dig out, impossible to kill. Most people don’t know which they are until life starts to kick them around. Early in 1984, I found out which I am. I’m a weed.



And now i need some fluff.

"I went back to watching the videos. A boy, who sang like a girl, told me not to stop believing—though what I wasn’t supposed to stop believing was a bit elusive."

[LenaRibka · Rating 5 out of 5]

The waiting has been worth it.

Marshall Thornton DID IT AGAIN!!!!!

And I swear, it was not THAT easy.

The book 5 was a PERFECTION.
It was almost IMPOSSIBLE to overtop it. I knew it.
It is why I was afraid to read the book 6.
Of course I was waiting for it.
You can't even imagine HOW I was waiting for it.
It had to be released on 23th of May.
I spent ALMOST the whole day checking Amazon every 10 Min. NOTHING.
I was exhausted. I was angry!
And...I was afraid: "What if the book 6 wont't be as good as I hoped?!"

I should have better trusted Marshall Thornton's writing skills.

He is one of the most AMAZING, GIFTED, EXPRESSIVE and the best ONE PERSON'S POV WRITERS that this genre can offer.

The bad news - we have to wait one year for the next book.
The good news - Marshall Thornton plans at least 10 sequels. (*happy dance*!!)

I have to confess that I'm not a big fan of endless series. Very often they are nothing else than countless number of misunderstandings, cheating and very unreal situations. And very often I simply go nuts over it. That particularly applies a romance genre.
But Boystown it is not a ROMANCE. And Boystown 6 is even LESS a romance than the previous books. It is in the first place A GREAT UNIQUE MYSTERY, EXCELLENT WRITTEN, with ONLY ONE main character - Nick Nowak, a private investigator.

If you look for a typical romance hero, then you're with Nick Nowak on the wrong place.
Though being sometimes a bad ass, he is very smart, LOYAL, complicated in all possible ways, sexy, witty, VERY REAL and so damn HONEST. I LOVE HIM. I FEEL WITH HIM. AND I SUFFER WITH HIM.

We're talking about the book 6 in the series, I don't have to explain a lot. It is not a stand alone. You have to start from the beginning.
Do it. Please, do it.

WHY the book 6 is great:

Nick and Mrs.Harker. I'm so happy they found the way to each other, the way to forgive and to accept and to help each other. This scene, on the sofa, in her apartment...

She closed the album, and said, so quietly I wasn't sure I heard her at first, "I miss him."
"I miss him, too."

I had to run away form everybody and everything, because I couldn't stop to cry. Silly. But I'm sure that readers who did this through can understand me. Holy f*ck! It was just two word but they made me DIZZY. Try it again and you'll fail.

HOW Nick got back to his PI job.

The mystery. It was soooo gooooood. But is it not always?

Daniel. I think this chapter of Nick's life is consider be closed now. Nick has to move further.

When we broke up, when we were bashed, Daniel had wanted to put in a police report. That was the brave thing to do and I couldn't do it. And now, it seemed to me that in the face of this sickness, in the face of possibly dying, the brave thing to do was to go ahead and have a life anyway, and yet Daniel couldn't do that. Somehow we had changed places.

I'm not religious. But I felt with Nick somehow, and I think that the confession was good for him.

What did I really consider a sin? What did I really want to confess to this man? I wasn't going to sit there and tell him about all the sex I'd had. I didn't consider it wrong. And I certainly wasn't repentant. Then the words, "I killed a man", came out of mouth.[...]
How could my penance for killing someone be to forgive myself? That seemed absurd. And yet so Catholic.

Brian. Thank you, Brian, for USING a condom!!!! It was the first mention of it in the series. And it marks a turning point in the history, yeah, I want to be pathetic. Because celibacy was not the only sane response to what was happening at that time.

The ending. Marshall Thornton writes ALWAYS the best endings, he is a MASTER of endings. Doesn't matter how I was grieving with Nick through the book, the ending was BEAUTIFUL. And so full of hopes and optimism. The very last lines:

"With all the things that are happening in the world, shouldn't it be okay? Just to say I love you?"
"Yes, it should be okay."
And it was.

Nick. Nick. Nick. Nick. And...just Nick.

The writing.
THE WRITING.
THE. WRITING.

I LOVE YOU, MARSHALL!!!
I want more of Nick!!!
Sorry, I was drunk, all I wanted to say was:

Marshall Thornton is the best gay mystery writer we have.
And if you don't get it yet, I can't help you.

[Ingie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written December 1, 2014

4 1/2 - Another enjoying "Nick Nowak" story - AWESOME and cool as expected

Book #6



A highly recommended series for romance readers which also loves crime stories. The Boystown series is about gay men in the 1980:s Chicago. There in Boystown is this cool, tough, horny gay MC —the unforgetable— private investigator Nick Nowak.

***********************************************************

Chicago 1984 - in a closet with a Catholic priest...

‘I made an attempt to not think about his ass pressed tightly into my lap. An unsuccessful attempt.’

I just finished this 6 hrs audiobook which was, like the five before, grand and excellent narrated by the fantastic voice from Brad Langer.

From the Ashes, was another great installment to this fantastic series. Mr Marshall Thornton does it so well every time. I just hope there will be more books to enjoy soonish.

I LIKE - ...all kinds of awesome


*************

~ The Boystown series by Marshall Thornton:

My reviews: #1 (3.8 stars), #2 (4 stars), #3 (4.5 stars), #4 (4.7 stars), #5 (5 stars) and here #6 (4.5 stars).

+

[Rosa, really · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dear Mr. Marshall Thornton;

May I call you Marshall? Great, Marshall – bloody hell can you write. You’re one of the few authors that make me want to get real physical with my Kindle. I don’t know how else to express my appreciation of your Boystown series. Well, okay, maybe I could just say, “Dude, you rock.” However, I suspect that you may be the type of guy to stop listening the minute you hear the word “dude.” So, instead I’ll say, Marshall, you make me want to French kiss a piece of machinery.



Yes, that’s much better.

Decidedly not calling you an awesome, dude-like writer,

Rosa, really


Okay, I’ll put hi-hi-hilarities aside for now. Major spoilers ahead -- so please don’t let your fingers do the walking. Or clicking. Whatever.


This is not the story of Nick Novak’s return to life. This is not the story of how Nick accepts the death of his lover, Harker, and learns to move on. There is no acceptance. There is no moving on. Grief lessens with time, but it never disappears. It continually burns you from the inside. Nick says it best in Boystown 5: Murder Book:

Grieving is like being set afire. Except when you try to put out the flames they disappear; when you try to salve your wounds you find your skin unblemished. You take a breath, thinking the worst has passed, and then grief bursts into flame anew. It rages, it roars, it smolders, all at its own unfathomable whim. You can’t shake it; you have no choice but to burn.

Nick is grieving the loss of his lover and the years they may have had. He’s also grieving the loss of his lover as he knew him. The Harker Nick knew wouldn’t have abandoned him, wouldn’t have left him willingly, without an apology or an explanation.

But Nick is also grieving his idea of himself. He may be a gun-toting PI, but he’s never been a murderer. Yet in an attempt to find justice for Harker, and alleviate his own pain, he kills a man. A guilty man, yes, but still another human being. Nick no longer trusts himself and he no longer wants to trust anyone else. He leaves everything and everyone to live a life of anonymity.

If you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. That’s how I’d wanted my life to be.

At the beginning of From the Ashes, Nick is dragged from his year of nothingness by the unlikeliest person in Chicago; his lover’s mother, Mrs. Harker. She has a murder for him to solve – a fantastic mystery full of plot twists. I loved trying to stay ahead of events, thinking I knew exactly what was going on only to be stumped again. But for me the mystery is less important than Nick’s attempt to return to his former life. Not just a life prior to his year as a bartender and drunk, but a life before his loss of Harker, before the AIDs epidemic, before his life became saturated with death.

But there’s no escaping any of these things. The first trick Nick picks up is grieving the loss of his own lover by AIDS. They end up holding each other instead of having sex. His friends Brian & Ross have broken up. Once Ross is diagnosed with AIDS, he avows his former life to return to his family and their faith in a rather unforgiving God. Daniel, his ex-lover, is so afraid of catching AIDS he no longer wants to be touched by anyone, especially Nick. Nick returned to the world, only to discover that it’s dealing with the very issues he was avoiding; loss & grief.

I don’t know if there’s any resolution to be found in From the Ashes. Thornton provides no easy answers to life and death and nor should he. His books reflect the hard truths of life, one of which is that life is a series of questions to which we rarely discover answers.

Questions, all I had were questions. It occurred to me that questions were really all there ever was. We almost never found answers in life. One of the things I liked about my job, one of the reason to go back to it, was that every once in a while, I stumbled across an answer. And that mattered, didn’t it?

So in the end Nick may be a changed man, his circumstances may have changed, but he is as he’s been from the start of the series; a man who focuses on solving crimes because he cannot solve the mysteries of his own life.

I’d like to write so much more about this book – how Nick rediscovers his trust in himself. That he’s capable of bringing a criminal to justice without murder. I could mention Nick’s thoughts on kindness, that “kindness is the only real bravery,” but he has so much trouble accepting kindness from and showing kindness to the people he cares for most. I’d like to discuss Nick’s friendship with Brian, a character who was first introduced in Boystown: Three Nick Nowak Mysteries. I’d like to mention Nick’s developing relationship with Mrs. Harker, who Thornton does such a wonderful job at portraying as a three-dimensional woman, not just some bitch who resents Nick. I could talk about his views on life being a series of betrayals. I could also mention the attraction he feels towards a priest. I’m very curious to see if and how that continues in the next book.

But, honestly, this is not a college essay or a review for the New York Review of Books and I’m on vacation (literally). What I want most to express is the love I feel for this book, Nick Nowak and the series in general. Like most of my favorites, the Boystown books make me laugh and cry. They frustrate and confuse me. They make me rethink myself and my life, but provide no false closure. And I am so FUCKING grateful Marshall Thornton is continuing this series. I really don’t know how I’ve lived without it so long.

Other books in this series included:

Boystown: Three Nick Nowak Mysteries
Boystown 2: Three More Nick Nowak Mysteries
Little Boy Dead: A Boystown Prequel
Boystown 3: Two Nick Nowak Novellas
Boystown 4: A Time For Secrets
Boystown 5: Murder Book

[Ariana (mostly offline) · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Your penance is to forgive yourself.”

Nick has hit rock bottom. A year after the horrendous events in book 5 he is drowning in grief, self-doubt and alcohol. Life and ‘the outside world’ seem to have ceased to exist for him as he drifts rather than lives.
But ... the thing about being right at your lowest point is – the only way from there is UP.

The sixth book in the series made me love Nick.
There are plenty of moving moments, but the two most poignant for me are when …

... Nick asks for a highly unusual payment in a case he can’t refuse (his request really moved me to tears.)
... Nick seeks confession in church. The Catholic church and his family have abandoned, rejected and berated him, and yet, when he meets Father Joseph he feels the need to confess the mortal sin that has been burdening him the most, giving him sleepless nights and causing a lot of damaging self-doubt. And the priest's response is just heart-rending.

“Your penance is to forgive yourself.” (Joseph)
“That’s not easy.” (Nick)
“Are you asking me to give you an easy penance?”
“I’m not someone who does things the easy way.”

And never has a truer word been said.
How Nick is able to upkeep his innate sense of justice, his unshakable integrity as a human being and his straightforward honesty is a mystery to me. And his insights, his reflection on his actions against the background of his own personal nightmare are humbling.

Kindness is the only real bravery.

To me being right with God meant being decent.

And Nick is brave and decent in so many ways. (And yes, he still makes mistakes, too, but in my eyes that makes him ultimately human!)

Because it is 1984 and AIDS has started to spread fear and uncertainty through the gay community, leaving them open to religious ranting, false hopes and vicious vilification by the public. The reality in Marshall Thornton’s descriptions, the personal approach he takes to show us the immediate effects on Nick’s life really hits home the message.

And now it seemed to me that in the face of this sickness, in the face of possibly dying, the brave thing to do was to go ahead and have a life anyway.

Despite the serious themes, we can enjoy more of Nick’s dry, sarcastic humour and a sparkle of hope for the future. I can't wait to return to Nick and in particular find out more about Joseph!

A moving and very profound book.

[Sofia · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars

Whilst I was in the first chapters of this book, I saw that a friend of mine had finished it and was bemoaning the fact that she had to wait a year for another instalment. I was a bit blasé about it as that is what happens in a series. Now I want to whine like she did, do I have to wait another year for another instalment. These couple of days I had gotten used to Nick again and now I have to do without again, I certainly feel like pouting here.

What to say about the actual book. Thornton has not lost his touch. I think he is getting better like wine. The flow is smooth and so nice on the palate. We pick up Nick after a year of mourning Harker. He is stuck in a drunken rut with all his hope dashed. But help comes from an unlikely source and help it is. Mrs Harker rides to the rescue and forces him back to work. She jolts him out of his obstinate rut and lures him out with photos of Harker. Their relationship is beautiful to watch. Both so obstinate, both so hurt and both in mourning and both needing each other, first of all because of whom they lost but also they are in need, one of a mother and the other of a son.

This sense of Nick’s reunion with life comes through even with his renewal of his relationship with Brian who like him is dealing with loss. Recapturing the past with Daniel once again fails. Fate appears to be working against him. Their time seems to have passed and these seem to keep missing each other’s train. On the other hand I am already anxious about the ramifications of Joseph. Why does Nick never has an easy path, is Thornton a sadist?

The crime and its resolution is one of the best in this series. It is intricate, interesting and surprising. The characters involved pull at you and make you care about their story and it was a joy seeing Nick picking up the threads again. You could almost see him come to life.

This is a book of loss, mourning, rebirth and continued living and I loved reading it.

[* A Reader Obsessed * · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nick has been limping along over the past year, trying to forget his former life and actually, succeeding. When he least expects it, from the last person on earth he'd thought would come to him, he's drawn back into detecting. And by golly he's still good at it. He's tenacious, resourceful, and shockingly, not all of his brain cells have been killed by Johnny Walker Red.

Despite his return from anonymity, Nick is still mourning. He still doubts his morality and is still so, so bitter. However, he's got a case to solve and he's a bit surprised that his sense of right and wrong, his need for justice to prevail, has not left him.

Ever present and looming in the background is the AIDS epidemic. It pushes its way into Nick's life, has affected so many people he knows, knew, loved, loves. Everywhere he turns, its cold reality touches on who he meets, and interferes with his very lifestyle and decisions. As always, this is starkly realistic, horribly enlightening, and devastating in showcasing loss. But you know what?? I'm kinda getting my hopes up.

Seriously.

Am I wrong to get my hopes up? Am I jumping the gun?? Is my optimism going to ultimately disappoint and depress me??

Probably.

Despite future books potentially ripping out my heart again (yeah I'm pointing at you, Murder Book) that won't hold me back, no matter the threat it poses to my mental well being.

[LenaRibka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Audible

Brad Langer is an awesome narrator and Marshall Thornton is a fantastic writer. A perfect combination.

My original review to Boystown 6.

I've just recognised - I have 3 editions of this book:

1)The first edition I bought by MLR Press.
2)The second edition from Amazon.
3)Audible.

That means, I'm armed and ready for the book 7!

I'm counting down the hours and minutes to the release date of Boystown 7!!!

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

**Spoilers Ahead**

Have you ever wanted to drop everything and disappear? Hide from everyone that knows your story? Go where no one knows your problems and pain?

Nick Nowak does just that.

But we can’t stay gone forever. Hiding only works for so long. Pain and memories need to be felt and dealt with. We need to remember…

“That he’d been real and wasn’t just some dream of love and pain that had swept in and out of my life.”

*sigh* Nick will make your heart ache in this visit.

Work and unexpected faces haul Nick out of the bar and back into the land of the living. Back pounding the streets and asking questions on a case filled to the brim with trouble. Trouble of the highest holy order! God, religion, priests, rumors, murder, abuse—hell you name it—it’s in here! There is a lot of religion in this story. And once again I find myself giving Mr. Thornton huge praise and applause. He deals with the religious beliefs and plot twists head on with humor and honesty. He even threw in an interesting twist in the form of a crooked, broken smile. Can’t wait to see if anything more develops there.

This was my favorite made-me-smirk-because-it’s-true line:

”How could my penance for killing someone be to forgive myself? That seemed absurd. And yet so Catholic.” Hehe…

Dammit! I didn’t want to do another review filled with spoilers, but we are at book 6 here! It’s impossible to rave without spilling some secrets. I’ve said it all before anyway—I love Marshall Thornton’s words, Nick’s voice, the city of Chicago, and the 80s. This series has completely stolen my heart. And set me off researching as well. I know the Boystown series is fiction, but it has showed me a side of history that I want to know more of. It reveals such a personal side to the facts and articles I have read on AIDS and the early 1980s. A time filled with change and fear and rumors. To see these men filled with so much fear breaks my heart. To know so little about what is killing the people you love. It stuns my heart with so much anger and pain. But also love. Huge love for this series and the way the characters deal with and learn about AIDS and sex in such a realistic, heartbreaking way.

This is a must read series.

I hope everyone gets to meet Nick.

This is just one of my favorite Nick moments in book 6:

When he quit the bar job. Not even a second thought. As soon as he realized Brian was not going to get served there—BAM! He was moving to the door even before the thought had time to form and finish. He just did it. Out the door. I loved and respected Nick so completely at that very moment.

I’m making a run for it before I throw in another spoiler. :)

I’m all caught up in Boystown for now. I’ll be right here waiting for more with my cup of coffee and bear claw. *taps foot*

[Irina · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Was that all life really was? A series of betrayals? Was there no way we could avoid damaging each other?”

What a breathtaking journey it had been. It was intense, all-consuming, poignant and thought-provoking. And luckily, it's not over yet..

“Questions, all I had were questions. It occurred to me that questions were really all there ever was. We almost never found answers in life.”

Reading Boystown is like having a neverending fever. It's very contagious and those starting the series should know that they are in a real danger of getting addicted. Because it leaves no one unaffected.

The power of words has no limits. Marshall Thornton creates this perfectly imperfect character of Nick that we can't help but wish to fix and hope for some joy in his life. He makes mistakes, he falls, gets up again and slowly crawls his way forward. Just like he says, he is a weed. He also reaches deep inside you and takes a special place that you know will always be reserved for him.

In this book, we see Nick lonely and despaired, half-heartedly attempting to fill the void inside him one moment, and giving up the next.

“If you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. That’s how I’d wanted my life to be."

But despite the distance he keeps and the isolation he tries to maintain, he discovers that there are people in his life to whom he really matters. All he needs to do is accept their love, forgive himself and those he feels betrayed him, and build a new life from the ashes.

I must confess, after a roller coaster of the previous book that blew me away, it was slightly bewildering to slow down so much. I think, I have to reluctantly admit that while I enjoyed and admired the less shocking sixth instalment, my favorite remains a book #5.

Now I'm just desperate for more. This series had left me with a crushing book hangover that will most likely take a while to go away. I really hope we get to see more of Nick very soon again. And, if M.Thornton is so inclined, a little (or better yet, MORE!) happier next time.

[ᴥ Irena ᴥ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, I think it speaks for itself that I read this in one sitting.

Nick is at the lowest point in his life. He gave up his apartment, he isn't working as a PI (haven't been to his office in months) and he is working as a bartender at a place none of his friends or acquaintances could find him. And yet one of the least likely people enters the bar and asks for his help to investigate the death of a priest.
Nick soon realizes that a priest who died of heart attack had a little help.

The mystery is simple and yet it still holds surprises, something Marshall Thornton seem to be very good at. Simple in this case doesn't mean bad. This case slowly gets Nick back to the world he tried to leave.
The payment he gets for the case is heartbreaking. I still have this image in my mind of the two people sitting in a neat little room looking at old photographs.

Actually, the whole book is heartbreaking.

There is this subtle shift in attitudes, Nick's and everyone else's. You get a picture of different reactions to the latest threat none of them could do anything about (the best example is Daniel's reaction on the one side and the guy from the coffee shop the other).

[monika · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I don’t mean I love you that way. Not like I love Ross. Not like you love Harker. I mean, I care about you, Nick. You’re my friend. With all the things that are happening in the world, shouldn’t it be okay? Just to say I love you?” “Yes, it should be okay.” And it was.

audio by Brad Langer - 5 ⭐️

[KatieMc · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was perfect. Nick is perfect. Nick in the closet with a priest is perfect. Even Nick and Mrs. Harker are perfect.

[Jennifer☠Pher☠ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nick at rock bottom. Totally rock bottom.

I am reading these back to back and so very fast there is just no time to really gather my thoughts. There are a ton of great reviews out there so I feel I don't need to add much.

This killed my soul. Although there seemed to be a feeling of hope or something throughout it was mostly soul killing.

[Eugenia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one is about a Catholic Church…

And…
Schoolboys
A death
A murder
A cover up or two
And Nick slowly getting himself back together

My rec? I wish the rest of the series were on audiobook, too. This one was spectacular!

[Ulysses Dietz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boystown 6
Up from the Ashes

By Marshall Thornton

4.5 stars

I think Marshall Thornton’s writing is getting better. The book opens a year after Book 5 closed, a story tainted with violent death and tragic loss for Nick Nowak. Right away I noticed that Thornton’s familiar “noir” style—terse, descriptive, lean—is richer and spiced with little bits of wry humor and vivid description. Not that I haven’t enjoyed every one of these Nick Nowak detective stories; but something about the language in this one just kept catching my notice and giving me added pleasure in the reading. For example:

“The church itself was the most elaborate with a four-story steeple, topped with a dome and a cross. It was imposing and I had the uncomfortable feeling I was being bullied into believing in God.”

I cite that passage, because in “Up from the Ashes” Nick deals a lot with the Catholic Church. In some ways, it’s just what you’d expect, given the church’s sketchy history of the last thirty years; but in others, it’s a surprisingly compassionate take on one lapsed gay Catholic’s cautious dealings with priests and parochial school. I really admired Thornton’s careful weaving of the story, his development of various key roles in the drama, and the somewhat unexpected solution to the mystery.

Perhaps the most powerful element in the book is its most low-key narrative thread: the gradual thawing of Nick’s hate/hate relationship with Bert Harker’s mother, Eva. The promotion of the book pretends this is a spoiler, but Mrs. Harker shows up early in the book, asking for Nick’s help in solving a mystery that doesn’t appear to be a mystery. Out of this awkward start, a shift begins to take place in tiny increments, and it left me touched and warmed, without any sort of sentimentality. It is one of the many such little pleasures mixed up in this interesting, beautifully penned episode in the Boystown series.

Of course the continuing background theme is the emerging awareness of AIDS, and that inevitably colors the mood in the book. Thornton understands the importance of telling this story, too; but he resists making it the central theme of the book. After all, it wasn’t really a central theme of our lives back in 1984 because, appallingly, most of us still didn’t understand what AIDS was and what it was going to do to us over the next fifteen years. Nowack and others in the book are dealing with it, each in their own way. Without giving anything away, there was a single scene toward the end of the book with his friend Brian that made me heave a sigh of relief. I can’t explain it any more than that without giving away details. But Marshall handled it just right, and I found myself feeling weirdly grateful.

Read this. Read all of them. They’re important parts of the great world of detective fiction, and an even more important contribution to the gay side of that—along with Joseph Hansen, Neil Plakcy, and Greg Herren.

[Alona · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, yes, I needed a couple of days to get my thoughts organized.

It was not an easy read, it was very melancholic, you feel Nick's suffering and grieving through each page.
Nick is hiding from the world and punishing himself, he lost contact with all his friends, he stopped working as a privet investigator, he left his flat and pass the days drinking or serving drinks.

Funnily enough, it is Harker's mother that (unknowingly???) giving Nick an out from the darkness by asking him to investigate her priests death.

This book takes us to a ride in a time that is so HUGE in the gay lifestyle's history, the exact time that changed everything, and I felt privilege to walk that walk through the pages.

I cried through the last two books like a baby on few occasions, here in that book Ross part killed me and broke me to million little pieces, it was not just what happened to him but also the way he took it, God, it's Ross! Happy, sweet, beautiful, kind Ross!!

The way Nick and Harker's mother ended up was also an intense moment that made me take a little brake to pick myself up.

I was terrified (don't really know why, probably because my love for Harker) that Nick will go back to Daniel, but thank god he did not!!

I think it ended beautifully, NO, Nick pain did not end, but I feel he is on his way there.

CANT WAIT for book 7! A year you say?? Cruel torture!

[Otila · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just realized I hadn't rated this. I love this series. I'll try to write a review when I listen to this audio book.

[Connie Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the end of this book Nick has turned the corner and is starting to heal and move forward with his life after losing Harker. But it is a long and melancholy road. I feel like I am still grieving as well. Still though, an excellent book and audiobook. I especially appreciated the growing respect between him and Mrs. Harker. As always, the mystery aspect is really well done. Looking forward to Book 7 - due out next month? And hoping that the audiobook comes along with it.

[Joy · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Some people are like orchids: delicate, easily bruised, wilted by a chill breeze. Others are more like weeds: stubborn, hard to dig out, impossible to kill. Most people don't know which they are until life starts to kick them around. Early in 1984, I found out which I am. I'm a weed."

Excellent--brilliant--exceptionally good--I can't describe how great this book is--Marshall Thornton weaves mystery around life in the early 1980's--this series is a must read--actually I'll go back and read it again soon--

[Mare SLiTsReaD Reviews · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am writing this review with a heavy heart. Because…..

It’s been a little over a week and I haven’t read a thing. Thank you Marshall Thornton! You’ve ruined me.

Its the end guys, and I don’t really know what to do with myself. I keep replaying scenes in my head. I’m at a loss on how to function properly now. How do I do it? How do I go back to normal after reading this series?? I can’t get passed it. I am wrapped in this bubble that is stuck in the 80′s and I can’t get out of it. And truth be told in a way I don’t want to leave. I wanna stay there. With this heartbreak that I am feeling from book 3 to the end of book 6. With this humbled feeling all through my chest. With my love for all things Nick Nowak.

I’m that HEA girl. Give me angst, and heartache and grief, great kisses and HOT sex through 95% of the book. But that last 5% needs to be a HEA for me to feel fulfilled. That’s just me. But, I am pretty sure that’s about 95% of female readers. We read to escape reality. We read to feel good. In the end our lovers/boyfriends/husbands/fuck buddies all get the good end of the stick while, during and after. You know its true. We want the romance. So at this point I would tell you if you want Romance then this series isn’t really for you. BUT. And here is the BUT. You would be dumb not to read it. It is such a great series. Marshall Thornton is an amazing story teller. He keeps you wanting MORE MORE MORE. There is love. It may be a bit unconventional, but it is there woven in the pages.

So I will start at the beginning. I won’t go into what each book is about ~ Cause you just gotta read them.

Nick Nowak series is set from 1979 (Little Boy Dead) to 1984 (From the Ashes)

The premise of all books follow a gay PI. Nick Nowak. His work; the genre is mystery, and throughout the series, GRID or AIDS is starting to become and epidemic. A bunch of supporting cast members that are in all the books. Some you will grow to love and some who are just meh.

Book 1 & 2: We meet Nick Nowak. At 1st I just kept thinking W.T.F. Is this guy for real??? I think btwn book 1 & 2 my man slept with… You know what. I can’t even tell you. I just stopped counting. And the threesomes. Yah. Those threesomes.

The sex was just, it was to bust a nut really. No connection. No nothing. And yet, I couldn’t stop reading about this broken man who is missing his 1st love, Daniel, who outed Nick for being gay. Nick becomes a PI because he can longer be a cop. Why? Cause he’s gay and treated very differently from family to peers. And then we meet Harker in book 2. Harker who is a closet case gay cop. Who shares a name with my husband. Obvs I liked him even more for just that.

Book 3: OK. Now I’m so invested that I can literally feel my heart wanting to crack in half and by the end I want to vomit everything I just ate. Because a unknown disease is happening and people are starting to die. And we find out that that unknown disease is called GRID. And Harker is sick and I want to throw my e-reader across the room and kill anyone who thinks they can disturb me in this world. Nick is caught btwn is 1st love and the love he feels for Harker. His time with his ex Daniel. All of it hurt me. All of it.

Gay-related immune deficiency (GRID) was the name first proposed in 1982 to describe an “unexpected cluster of cases” of what is now known as AIDS, after public health scientists noticed clusters of Kaposi’s sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia among gay males in Southern California and New York City. 

“My lover. I’d never called Harker that before. But it was true. That’s why I’d never been able to tell him about Daniel. That’s why I hadn’t left him for Daniel. And that’s why I couldn’t return Daniel’s call. I loved Harker. Without planning to, without even thinking, I’d chosen Harker over Daniel. I’d decided weeks before and never owned up to it. I could have kicked myself for being such a lug. I loved Harker. Loved him fully and completely. He was mine. And he was slipping through my fingers.”

Book 4: OMG my heart. My heart. My fucking heart. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. Harker. GOD. I can’t imagine how everyone felt when their loved ones starting getting sick and not getting better, dying. My heart just hurts. And I have been humbled. Marshall Thornton does grief amongst the pages really really well. We meet Christian who has a thing for Harker. I don’t like Christian. At all. No I don’t. Harker’s mama. I loved her. I did. Even though she was a homophobe she loved her Bertram and accepted Nick as a good “friend”. The grief they shared in his illness and doctor visits hurt. And throughout this book I have a severe case of love/hate with Nick. His random sexcapades are pissing me off. Immensely. I want to throat punch him and then hug him.

“Fucking is primal. Instinctive. Necessary. It is life. Or at least, that’s what I was thinking when I came deep inside this strangers ass.”

“Everything works out for the best.” I struggled to smile. I didn’t believe it for a minute. Things did not work out for the best unless you bent logic into a pretzel.”

Book 5: OMG. I wanted to throat punch Marshall Thornton (sorry, not sorry). He stole my grief. He and the Bughouse Slasher. HOW DARE YOU. I wanted/needed more time with Harker. I hated the way this book started and it was a 5 star read. Cause the emotions evoked in this book would drive a sane person insane. I couldn’t even cry. I was just so bloody angered. Angry doesn’t even cut it. Page 1 sliced me deep and I didn’t even recover. I was given no time. AT ALL. I felt everything Nick felt in this book. EVERY LITTLE THING. Throughout this book I kept thinking it was Christian. I wanted him to die. Don’t ask me why. He bothered me to no extent. I didn’t like him. At all.

“Grieving is like being set afire. Except when you try to put out the flames they disappear; when you try to salve your wounds you find your skin unblemished. You take a breath, thinking the worst has passed, and then grief bursts into flames anew. It rages, it roars, it smolders, all at its own unfathomable whim. You can’t shake it; you have no choice but to burn.”

Book 6: Book 6 is both Nick and I trying to move on after we have lost Harker. Nick’s relationship with Harker’s mom makes me laugh. I liked the way they moved with each other. The way they both tried to pick up the pieces. How Harker’s mom helped Nick move on, somewhat. She brought him back to himself. We can all thank her for that.

This series is hands down the most thought provoking, immense feelings, how do I go on read that you will ever have. I now know what “empty nest syndrome” is all about because I am suffering from it. I would like to thank my co-blogger Silvana for helping me and understanding exactly how I felt as I tried to come out of this world and back to reality.

Thank you to Marshall Thornton for giving us a series that is so well written, thought provoking and eye opening.

Mare~Slitsread

[A.B. Gayle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This series justs gets better and better.

You don't have to have read the previous ones to follow the plot, but the ongoing saga surrounding Nick's personal life is better appreciated if you have read them all in sequence.

I loved the way AIDS was handled in this book. In the previous ones we saw the growing awareness of it in the community.

In this one, we see the different ways gay men coped with it emotionally and physically. Some turn to religion and rejection of their former life, seeing it as penance for their sins. Others become celibate in fear of catching the disease. Others research how to have sex safely and yet others live in denial.

The characters are what makes this series stand out. Nick remains the solid core of the story, a mostly reliable narrator. Yet even he changes and grows from episode to episode as he is affected by the people he encounters and the mysteries he has to solve. Even if he doesn't want to change.

There were some memorable lines about how people had betrayed him in different ways and moments later, recognising that he has also betrayed them in a way.

The episode with Daniel was perhaps the most painful of all. I had held out hope that the lovers would one day be reconciled, but this story shows how people can and do change. You can't go back, as they say.

We didn't meet all the fabulous characters in this story, some are obviously waiting on the sidelines: Sugar Pilson, Jimmy English, Christian, but we did meet some great new ones. A parish priest who is obviously struggling with the fact he is gay. An underage boy who is very quick to offer blowjobs because he enjoys them so much.

Then finally, Mrs Harker. Bert's mother could be the stereotypical character from hell. Yet, even Nick is starting to dent her armor creating a fragile truce between two people who loved and lost the same person.

Once again, the city of Chicago provides a chilling backdrop. The seediness of certain areas. The weather.

This series offers so much and is such an easy read. I hope they are easy to write, as I'm eagerly looking forward to the next instalment.

[Trix · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let me just say upfront that it has been a fascinating read which means this review is written after I've already finished volume 8 so my opinion may be skewered. I'll try to avoid spoilers.

Hard road back to living for Nick. I was saddened to see him so bereft, devoid of any will to live beyond the routine of making a few bucks to keep a roof over his head and enough booze to leave him unconscious until the next day when the cycle would repeat itself. I could understand his turmoil: grief over losing his lover, anger for Bert's last actions, regret over killing his murderer. And help comes from the unlikely source of Bert's mother. Hard to believe, considering all the tension between the two. But you can't look a gift horse in the mouth. It was refreshing to see Nick clear away the cobweb and stretch out his investigative skills once more. Made difficult for having to stay sober but you can still see Nick's brilliant intuitive thinking going through possibilities.

On the romantic side, there was the interesting flirting with father Joseph. I am suspicious of new characters that I don't know about and I even feared at one point Joseph might be the killer or anyone that might want to hurt Nick. That proved unfounded as Joseph managed to get Nick to confess and make him ease up on the self guilt. And there was a brief rekindle with Daniel (despite all obvious signs that their relationship is only a memory now, and their encounters will be accidental, I still hold a soft spot for Daniel and dream of them surpassing their differences).

A surprise ending. I wouldn't have figured Lily as the killer, nor that she's be capable of enough treachery to escape Nick. Thank God she was captured eventually. And the story just doesn't let you stop which is why I jumped to the next installment and barely now had time to write a few words.

[CrabbyPatty · Rating 5 out of 5]

After the utter heartbreak of Murder Book, the sixth book in Thornton's series is about sin and forgiveness, resolution and redemption.

He [Father Joseph] spoke about sin, but not sin as you find it in the Bible, more about something we do to ourselves; that when we are not our true selves, we sin against ourselves. That when we choose to do things that we know will hurt our true selves we are sinning.

Against a backdrop of the possible murder of a priest - a case brought to Nick by Mrs. Harker - Nick (and we readers) ponder how to cope with betrayal, tragedy, impending death. As Nick realizes, Ross was gone to God; Daniel to his fear, and Harker to justice. The path seems clearer as the AIDS plague relentlessly moves on - you hide in god, you surrender to fear, or you go forth, do good and practice mercy. From the Ashes is a powerful book.

[Leyna · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Some people are like orchids: delicate, easily bruised, wilted by a chill breeze. Others are more like weeds: stubborn, hard to dig out, impossible to kill. Most people don't know which they are until life starts to kick them around. Early in 1984, I found out which I am. I'm a weed."

[Kaje Harper · Rating 5 out of 5]

As this book opens, Nick is seen coping, or not coping, with the realities of what he did and what happened in the last installment. This is a shaken Nick, changed, searching. But as time goes by, you see a hint of the old, intelligent and curious PI emerging. The title is apt, and the positive arc of this story is welcome.

One of the most poignant parts of this is reading about the varying reactions of the gay men around Nick to the still-perplexing onslaught of AIDS. At that time, no one really knew what caused the disease. Theories ran from kissing to sex to poppers, to poisoning and conspiracy, to a judgment by the Almighty. Men who became ill reacted in various different ways, and watching Ross, Daniel and other familiar friends try to find their path is painful in a myriad of ways. But despite that, this book ends positively for Nick, as he rises from his own ashes to reach for a little of the confident, diligent investigator he once was. Much of his life path still remains in doubt, waiting for the next installment. As I am...

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

This Is an excellent book.Love the series and hope to continue reading more about Nick and all the other characters soon. I hope we will have at least 10 books more.

[Dee Wy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another good mystery and I can't believe it - Mrs. Harker LIKES Nick now. Will wonders never cease? Must read just to find out how that happened, lol

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A year or so on from the events of book 5 and Nick has isolated himself and let his business collapse. While book 5 was certainly not bad, serial killers books are the least interesting form of crime fiction, and the return to the single victim murder mystery format worked much better for me. Though, the handling of the emotional side, Nick's grief, guilt, and the supposed reason he was no longer working as a private investigator felt rather perfunctory.

Still, I'm enjoying the series and the question now is do I go on to 7 or detour for the newly released book 4 in Thornton's "Dom Reilly" series.

[Shelba · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't as thrilled by the mystery storyline in this one as I have been with some of the other books, so while I loved the personal storyline, I'm bumping it down to 4 stars.