Noah starts off as one man who hesitates to get involved because of his own issues and then slowly he inserts himself into the investigation of a murder that no one seems to want solved in a hurry, if at all. Race riots, gay rights, so much more and Thornton captures it all. Yes, this is a murder mystery and a terrific one wrapped up within the tumultuous emotional times of the 90’s. I lived it and loved the references, noting them yet they never took my attention away from the drama that was Noah’s life and the riots occurring in L.A. The author seamlessly folds in all the elements and details of the era (old gadgets, movies, topics) into his story without making it a history lesson or info dump. Ah, VHS tapes, Blockbuster, and late returns! We meet Noah in his store with his employees wondering if his store will survive the riots currently taking place.

Thornton’s main character, Noah Valentine, is the owner of Pinx Video, that relic of the past, consigned to history by new technology. Yet Marshall Thornton brings it vividly to life in his novel Night Drop, the first in his new series Pinx Video Mysteries set in the 1990’s. Still both events are in the distant past. Here in the Washington, DC metro area we had our own race riots of the 90’s…the Mount Pleasant riots of 1991. I remember the Rodney King beating and the riots that followed in Los Angeles. The first in a new series from Lambda Award-winner Marshall Thornton, Night Drop strikes a lighter tone than the Boystown Mysteries, while bringing Silver Lake of the early 1990s to life. He died in the camera store fire-or did he? Noah and his charmingly meddlesome downstairs neighbors begin to suspect something else might have happened to Guy Peterson. After the riots end, he decides to stop by Guy’s to pick up his overdue videos, only to find Guy’s family dividing up his belongings. Noah Valentine, the owner of Pinx Video in Silver Lake, notices the fires have taken their toll on fellow shopkeeper Guy Peterson’s camera shop.

Night Drop by Marshall Thornton