The Backlot Gay Book Forum discussion

Rain (Bob and Marcus Mysteries, 3)
By H. N. Hirsch
Pisgah Press, 2023
Five stars

Set in the mid-1990s, this third of the Bob and Marcus mysteries is a quietly double-barreled story of murder on the one hand and family drama on the other. Bob Abramson and Marcus George have been together for ten years. Settled in San Diego, Bob has his own law practice, and Marcus is on the faculty at U.C. San Diego. While it’s odd to think of a book like this as a historical novel, it is a world before the Internet and hand-held devices ruled our lives. It’s also a world I remember vividly, since Marcus and I are the same age. The quiet domestic life he and Bob have forged resonates nicely with my life.

Yes, the core narrative focuses on Bob taking on a murder case against one of Marcus’s students; but a strong second narrative theme revolves around Bob’s family—his parents Ruth and Jake, his brother and sister-in-law Alex and Carol, and their son Jay. It is a powerful truth that this committed gay couple is supported by an extended family, a family whose own drama pulls Bob away from an increasingly unsettling murder investigation.

It's not just that we watch Bob give his all for his client, with the support of his partner, long before same-sex marriage was on the table. We also watch Bob struggle emotionally when those he loves most are in trouble. Again it is with Marcus’s support that he manages the personal struggle. They are not super-heroes; they’re just men looking for happiness in the only way they know how.

H.N. Hirsch is very deft in his weaving of the two plotlines together. Yes, it’s murder, but it’s also a life being lived, with all the quiet traumas and upsets that feel far more real than explosions or gunfights. To paraphrase a conversation at the end of the book, there’s the law, and then there’s real life.

The ending is, I hope, a set up for whatever the next book in this series will be. I feel very attached to Bob and Marcus, and don’t want to let them go yet.