Riordan, Rick Books

Big Red Tequila

Rick Riordan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 35 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Rick Riordan has loaded his first mystery with lots of genre baggage: this story about a man coming home to San Antonio, Texas, to rescue his old girlfriend and solve the 12-year-old murder of his sheriff father is a virtual homage to James (The Last Good Kiss) Crumley. But Riordan writes so well about the people and topography of his hometown that he very quickly marks the territory as his own. Tres Navarre has put behind him the teenage days when he and his friend Ralph Arguello would cruise through San Antonio, drinking a ferocious mixture of cheap tequila and Big Red cream soda. A University of California Ph.D. in English plus a fascination with t'ai chi ch'uan led Tres naturally enough to work as a private investigator in San Francisco. But one call from the love of his early life--the mysterious and captivating Lillian Cambridge, now trapped in dangerous work and love relationships--and Tres gladly trades his trendy Peet's coffee for the stronger brews of home.

The Devil Went Down to Austin

Rick Riordan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Things are good for San Antonio middle-school teacher-cum-mystery author Rick Riordan--great, in fact. His first two outings featuring San Antonio PI and part-time English professor Tres Navarre (Big Red Tequila, The Widower's Two Step) scored Shamus, Anthony, and Edgar awards, and The Last King of Texas has been likened to the proverbial sliced bread. In The Devil Went Down to Austin, on the other hand, things stink for Tres Navarre. His paraplegic brother, Garrett, has surreptitiously mortgaged the brothers' Austin ranch to subsidize an Internet startup. One of Garrett's partners, Ruby McBride, has been making nice with a sleazy corporate-takeover maven, Matthew Peña, and Garrett's been violently feuding with his other partner and lifelong friend, Jimmy Doebler. As for Jimmy, his day started with his divorce from Ruby and ended with a shot to the head. Worse yet, Jimmy bought it in his Chevy pickup by his lakeside home, just feet away from a ranting, beach-sprawled Garrett.

All that remains for Tres to do is exonerate his brother, find the real killer (whose clue-laden e-mails alternate with Tres's narrative, delivering Texas-sized creepiness), save the ranch, and with the help of Maia Lee, a beautiful lawyer from his past, untangle a skein of Doebler family murder, misery, and hurt. Witty, sharp as glass, and plotted as well as it's written, The Devil Went Down to Austin paints a high-tech Texas laced with treachery and tequila before a cranked-up Jimmy Buffett backdrop. Expect great things, because Riordan delivers. --Michael Hudson

Mission Road

Rick Riordan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The triple-crown winner of mystery’s most prestigious awards–the Edgar, the Anthony, and the Shamus–Rick Riordan blasted onto the crime scene with one of its freshest and most intriguing protagonists, Tres Navarre. In Mission Road, Navarre returns in a wrenching crime drama in which he must revisit the sins of the past to catch a killer about to get away with murder…again.

San Antonio private investigator Tres Navarre is used to working on the edge–that razor-sharp line between legal and life sentence. But this time he’s stepped straight into a no-man’s-land. When an old friend appears at his door spattered with blood and wanted for attempted homicide, Tres doesn’t have to think twice about where his loyalty lies–or the consequences.

Ralph Arguello is a criminal who put the street life behind him when he married SAPD detective Ana DeLeon. Now Ana’s been gunned down and her fellow cops don’t need to look far to find a prime suspect. For Ana recently reopened the most infamous cold case in SAPD history–the unsolved murder on notorious Mission Road eighteen years before that threw the San Antonio underworld into bloody chaos. Ana was about to bring charges against the suspected killer: her husband, Ralph Arguello.Tres is sure that Ralph didn’t do it–and that he didn’t shoot his wife. But with the police and the Mafia both out for revenge, there’s no one to turn to for help.

Now, armed and dangerous, the targets of a citywide manhunt, Tres and Ralph have just hours to
discover what really happened on Mission Road almost two decades ago. To find the truth, they must set a collision course with the past–and with a secret that will tear their lives apart.


From the Hardcover edition.

The Widower's Two-Step

Rick Riordan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Starts slow, speeds up, but can't quite equal the first book 4 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

In this second book in Rick Riordan's Tres Navarre series, PI-in-training Tres gets off to a bad start when the person he is tailing dies before his eyes (murder? suicide?). From there, our hero finds himself pulled into the worlds of drug dealing, family politics, and -- most deadly of all -- country music.

This title, like 'The Last King of Texas' (the third book in the series) starts off with a literal bang. But I found both 'Big Red Tequila' and 'Last King' easier stories to get into than this one was. Once the story starts moving, 'Widower's Two-Step' bears all the hallmarks of the Tres Navarre series: a plot that twists and turns, lots of characters (most with complex and hidden motivations), dramatic fights and confrontations, and truckloads of South Texas character. This book also introduces the Manos Detective Agency -- the employees of which have become regular characters in the Navarre series.

Devotees of the series will definitely want to read this title. I would recommend newcomers start with the first book ('Big Red Tequila') instead of dropping into the middle of the series, like I did. But even on its own merits, this interesting and atmospheric mystery is definitely worth a read or two.

Editorial Review:

Tres Navarre has just hours of apprenticeship time to serve before he can go for his P.I. license. Staking out a musician suspected of stealing a demo tape should be a piece of "pan dulce". But his attention wanders just long enough for fiddle player Julie Kearnes to be gunned down before his eyes. He should just back away and let the cops investigate, but backing away has never been Tres's strong point.

The Last King of Texas

Rick Riordan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

For his first two novels featuring PI Tres Navarre, Rick Riordan garnered the Anthony, Shamus, and Edgar Awards--a trio that few seasoned Mystery careerists can claim. In this third, equally entertaining installment, Riordan casts Navarre according to the other piece of his quirky skill set: his Ph.D. in English literature from UC Berkeley.

While the worst-case scenario envisioned by most professors at the University of Texas at San Antonio probably involves lost essays or a failed tenure bid, recently the medievalists at UTSA have wound up deader than their favorite language. At first, the deaths seemed like accidents. Dr. Theodore Haimer was forced to take an early retirement when his remarks about "the damn coddled Mexicans at UTSA" found their way into the Express-News. Shortly thereafter, the old man was discovered deceased, his head in a bowl of Apple Jacks, the result of an apparent heart attack. His successor, the young Dr. Aaron Brandon, continued to receive the vituperation and death threats that had followed his predecessor to the grave. Then, halfway into the semester, Brandon was also found dead--murdered. Now, Tres Nevarre is the only man crazy enough to fill the vacant chair of Chaucer studies and murder avoidance at the amiable institution. His first day on the job is the clincher: an exploding package leaves him both scarred and excited for the only academic job he's ever found that rivals Indiana Jones's.

Riordan's style blends the hipness of Elmore Leonard with the sardonic humor of Janet Evanovich. And like Evanovich, Riordan draws on the colorful character of his locale--in his case the twangy chili con carnage of San Antonio academic life--to pepper his narrative with a mixture of medieval literature, Tex-Mex dialogue, and Sherlock Holmesian puzzles. While there aren't many more awards for Riordan to conquer, The Last King of Texas will certainly win him some more loyal fans. --Patrick O'Kelley

Southtown

Rick Riordan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

I missed Tres ... and kinda still do. 4 out of 5 stars.
12 of 12 people found this review helpful.

I'm a big fan of Rick Riordan and his San Antonio PI Tres Navarre. I've enjoyed Riordan's previous novels, including the non-Tres Cold Springs, and am ready to declare he's the one novelist whose next work I'm always anxiously awaiting. After reading Southtown, I think I have to say my single favorite sentence in the entire work is the one at the end of the About the Author section: Rick Riordan "lives in San Antonio ... where he is at work on the next novel in the Tres Navarre series."

I'm looking forward to that one because, unfortunately, Southtown didn't quite slake my thirst for another great Tres adventure. In The Devil Went Down to Austin, the last Tres novel, Riordan introduced the technique of departing from Tres' first-person narrative from time to time to give the reader information Tres himself never saw. Now, in Southtown, about half the story is told in omniscient third-person. Only Tres' own scenes are told in his own voice.

This technique allows Riordan to do the kind of psychological exploration he did in Cold Springs. But it makes for a lot less Tres than many of his fans might like -- especially since this book already struck me as fairly brief relative to the other books in the series (it can't just have been my eagerness to read the story that let me finish the book in just a few hours over two evenings), and perhaps a little hurried. At one point, I found myself wondering whether Riordan is getting bored with Tres Navarre. After all, Conan Doyle came to hate Sherlock Holmes and was eager to push him over Reichenbach Falls so he could move on to writing other things. Riordan seems to be exploring different ways to convey psychological tension and suspense, which is great. But as a fan, I'm hoping Tres isn't getting in his way.

That's not to say this is a bad book. Certainly Tres fans won't want to pass it up. I've mentioned in a review of another Tres Navarre title that it's nice to see him maturing as a person (in his world) and a character (in ours), and both those processes continue in Southtown. Many of the supporting characters from earlier books are back, but Tres' relationships with them have evolved in subtle -- or sometimes less subtle -- ways. And the resolution of this story suggests even bigger changes to come in the future.

Southtown is a fine story and a good entry in a high-quality series. But it fell just a little bit short in paying off the eagerness with which I awaited it. So while I again find myself looking forward to the next Tres Navarre novel, I'm hoping the author isn't feeling compelled to turn them out too quickly. There haven't been any bad (or even so-so) Riordan books yet, but in my opinion the best Navarre books have been *really* good, and that's what I'm hoping to see again.

Editorial Review:

Texas PI Tres Navarre, Riordan's series hero, is back in this gritty thriller about an escaped killer seeking revenge on everyone who put him away--including a detective's widow who just happens to be Navarre's partner. Will Stirman, the mastermind behind a human trafficking operation, was brought down by Fred Barrow and Sam Barrera, who killed his wife and stole his seven million dollars. Barrera is slipping into senility, and Barrow's death was a bad dream Erainya Barrow would just as soon forget. But now Stirman holds her life--and her young son's--in his hands, and he won't let go until he gets his revenge as well as his money. There's plenty of violence but not a lot of suspense in this solidly crafted but ultimately forgettable mystery. --Jane Adams

Cold Springs

Rick Riordan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Aptly subtitled "A Novel of Secrets," this dark, probing tale examines the destructive ripple effects of a child's death on those around her--especially after doubts arise whether it was accident, suicide, or murder. In the harrowing opening pages, 16-year-old Katherine Chadwick ODs on heroin while babysitting little Mallory, daughter of her parents' best friends. Then the tale leaps forward nine years: both couples' marriages are in ruins; Katherine's father, once a schoolteacher, is now a bruising "escort" for a reform school in the Texas outback called Cold Springs; and his next assignment is to capture none other than Mallory, now 15 and in trouble.

Texas native Riordan, whose Tres Navarre series has earned acclaim and awards, evokes the landscapes around Cold Springs with vividness and authority, and also brings that sensibility to the book's Bay Area scenes:

Chadwick ... stepped out into the growing gloom of the evening. Down the block, he could hear the lowrider cruising, its stereo setting off car alarms all across the neighborhood like a bloodhound flushing quail.

But it's the book's complex plot and richly realized people--most notably its troubled teenagers (Riordan is a middle-school teacher)--that give Cold Springs substance and heft. You may need to persist through some tangled exposition in the first 75 pages or so, but the payoff is well worth it. The long climax offers a stunning series of cascading revelations, including a final kicker that changes everything. Riordan is the real deal. --Nicholas H. Allison

Rebel Island

Rick Riordan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Triple-crown winner of mystery’s most coveted awards—the Edgar, the Anthony, and the Shamus—Rick Riordan and his Texas-style take on the crime novel have never been bigger or darker than in this latest Tres Navarre thriller. This time Navarre faces a killer as unstoppable as a force of nature.

Tres Navarre had given up private investigation—and with it a violent past that had buried too many friends. Newly married, with a baby on the way, it was time to find a safer line of work. He and Maia had come to Rebel Island to celebrate their honeymoon and a new future. But no sooner had they arrived than a reminder of the past showed up in the form of a corpse shot dead in room 12.

Just like that Tres finds himself flashing back on the memory of a grim childhood summer spent on the island—a summer that changed everything in his life. A summer he could never forget but never entirely remember either. And when a second corpse turns up, it’s clear to Tres that the past is not dead and buried after all, but is stalking Rebel Island with unfinished business of its own.

What really happened that long-ago summer, what dark secrets were kept, and who has come back to avenge them…these are the questions Tres, his brother Garrett, and the very pregnant Maia must answer—and time is running out. For a monster hurricane is about to hit Rebel Island, cutting them off from the mainland and leaving them trapped on a flooding island with the hotel’s remaining guests brutally dying one by one. Tres knows better than anyone that the bloodlines of South Texas are as twisted as barbed wire. This time they’re guarding a revelation that can turn his dreams of happily ever after into the ultimate nightmare.