Naive

Micah Breuer, an accomplished art director living in present day New York City, comes home to find his husband Lennox lying naked on their living room floor in a pool of blood. Lennox has been brutally stabbed over 30 times but is still alive. Struggling to keep his husband breathing, Micah’s efforts end up killing him, and he is arrested for the murder.
Mysterious items are found at the crime scene, some suggesting a connection to the company he works for, while others point to an elusive heroin dealer known as Ghost. With a trial looming, Micah’s lawyer hustles to defend him. Together, they are catapulted into multiple dark realities of corporate corruption, Manhattan’s drug underworld, a questionable and overzealous prosecution, and the betrayal of a close friend who may have masterminded a murderous scheme that could land Micah in prison for life.
As Micah wrestles with his naiveté, his friends and enemies begin to question their own.

Fans of Patricia Highsmith (Talented Mr. Ripley) and Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl) will hopefully relish in the intricate contemporary tale of manipulation and naiveté, propelled by a strong protagonist in a fight for survival. Similarly, fans of Paul Hawkins (The Girl on a Train) should enjoy a modern domestic murder with unexpected twists and turns. Mix in some Michael Connelly (Lincoln Lawyer) police procedural elements, some John Grisham (The Firm, The Last Juror) courtroom drama and some Richard Price (Lush Life) Manhattan lower east side nuance, and you have a delicious tale that should appease fans of all of these authors.



ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born Charles (Chuck) Royce Hargett, Royce’s own life experience reminds him that Micah and Lennox inhabit a world he knows all too well—where superficiality meets authenticity, where shadow meets light. For example, he’s written double-platinum, Dove Award nominated, #1 songs for the Christian music industry, then began drowning his demons in alcohol and drugs (sober now since 2006). He’s worked as creative director for entertainment’s most iconic business magazine, eventually opening his own ad agency in NYC, then left it all behind to start a small southern bakery in his hometown. Most recently he’s studied mental health diagnosis and counseling in a master’s degree program, then wrote the mystery suspense thriller Naïve, a novel where the protagonist may or may not be a sociopath. Currently he’s a freelance creative director residing in Nashville with his partner of 5 years, who used to love him unconditionally. Then he read Naïve. Now he sleeps with one eye open.



Like Patricia Highsmith, he enjoys creating contemporary intrigue and suspense by examining extraordinary circumstances in ordinary lives, not by exploiting an LGBTQ angle, but by offering situations where some protagonists or antagonists just happen to be gay.



With Naïve, Royce has jumpstarted a world where entertainment, fashion and publishing collide with criminal justice, mental health and modern corruption to entwine readers in a cascading trilogy of three novels, immersing them in a multi-continent, decade-long tale of murder, betrayal, corporate scandal and revenge.