It's time to dig once more into my collection of BL manga and find a series that looked spectacular at first glance but lost some of its sheen as I read it.
GORGEOUS CARAT (Gojasu Karatto), by You Higuri. First published in 1999 and first published in North America in 2006.
PLOT:
In belle époque Paris, the rumor mill is abuzz about the sad fate of the Rocheforts. Once they were a wealthy aristocratic family, but now they have been reduced to selling off their family treasures one by one to survive. The Rocheforts' heir Florian wants to sell the family's most precious jewel, a giant diamond known as the Flame of Mughal, but his mother refuses out of sheer pride. Fate soon forces their hand by way a distant relative named Ray Balzac Courland, who is better known as the mysterious jewel thief Noir.
Ray offers the Rocheforts a choice: sell him the Flame of Mughal or sell him Florian to do with as he pleases. Florian agrees to the latter, and soon finds himself swept up in Ray's many schemes. He and Ray may have started as captive and captor, but more and more the two must work together to solve other crimes around them and live for another day.
