Having read most of Rick Riordan’s young adult series, I decided to switch to his adult mystery series which I started eons ago and enjoyed but somehow never finished. The Tres Navarre series includes seven books, Big Red Tequila, The Widower’s Two Step, The Last King of Texas, The Devil Went Down to Austin, Southtown, Mission Road, and Rebel Island.
Riordan used to live in San Antonio, and he really captures the atmosphere and the topography of the city. Having lived there three times in the past fifty years, I can easily picture every passing mile the protagonist, Jackson Navarre III (Tres), drives through the area. Tres has returned to San Antonio after bugging out of town when his cop father was killed. Tres is a bit of an atypical hero. He lived in San Francisco, earning a Ph.D. in medieval literature, becoming a Tai Chi master, and working as an enforcer for a legal firm. His life in San Antonio isn’t much different other than he’s working on getting his private investigator’s license. Tres is a good guy, tries to be decent, tries to uphold the spirit if not the letter of the law, but he keeps getting beat up, shot at, threatened, and running afoul of local law enforcement for not knowing when to step out of the picture. He has a big mouth, is too smart for his own good, and has a self-destructive tendency that is either admirable or idiotic depending on his situation.
The series is humorous though not as funny as Riordan’s young adult works, and I enjoyed reading them. They definitely capture the atmosphere of South Texas, San Antonio in particular, with a wide cast of characters that ring true to life, from his artistic hippie-hippie mother to his old high school buddies.
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The Tres Navarre mystery series (Bantam; Reissue edition, January 8, 2013) is available through:
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You can read my reviews of Riordan’s young adult series here:
The Trials of Apollo and The Heroes of Olympus
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