HOW TOWN by Michael Nava (Ballantine:...

HOW TOWN by Michael Nava (Ballantine: $3.99). Against his will, the hero of this tautly structured mystery--a gay, alcoholic, Chicano lawyer--is drawn back to the small, agricultural town in the Central Valley where he grew up, but never fit in. To the local elite, Henry Rios remains an upstart Mexican from the wrong side of the tracks; the heavy drinkers see him as a teetotaling killjoy; the heterosexuals regard him as an oddity, if not a degenerate. Rios’ problems are compounded when he finds himself in the unenviable position of defending a rich pedophile accused of murdering a sleazy child pornographer. Nava writes with an insider’s knowledge about the legal maneuvering that surrounds the administration of justice in contemporary America, but the most effective sections of his tale focus on the narrator’s bitter memories, and his discovery that he wouldn’t want to go home again, even if he could.