Goldenboy

Gay attorney Henry Rios, hero of Nava's previous The Little Death, appears here for the first time in hardcover, venturing from the Bay Area to Los Angeles to solve a series of grisly murders in a fast-paced novel that is as troubling as it is entertaining. When a gay teenager is arrested for the murder of a co-worker, who threatened to expose his homosexuality, Rios is called to L.A. by Larry Ross, a close friend and fellow lawyer who is dying of AIDS; too ill to rise to the boy's defense himself, Ross asks Rios to ""balance the accounts'' by preserving the accused murderer's life in exchange for Ross's own. Both, he explains, are afflicted by the same diseasethe bigotry that ``shows itself in letting people die of AIDS, making it so difficult for them to come out that it's easier to murder.'' Nava's palpable anger at that prejudiceand its tragic consequencescomes through with an urgency that transcends the central detective story. Despite a shamelessly sentimental ending, it is the many rough edges of Goldenboy that linger in the reader's mind long after the breathless conclusion. (March)