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Rating: 
Summary: Rick Riordan, work on your gun talk
Review: A decent detective yarn. Tres Navarre is an interesting character with interesting friends. Rick Riordan makes me wonder what they are going to do next which is a good thing. This novel has Tres taking a professorship with University of Texas, San Antonio. He's to protect himself from becoming the third professor in the position that dies and to help the detective agency he works for to find the killer of the other two. I liked the characters I was supposed to like and disliked the characters I was supposed to dislike. I was suitably confused about who the real bad guy was till the end of the book. I like the way the author writes about San Antonio. One thing Rick Riordan needs to work on is his gun lore, although it wouldn't surprise me if the author considered himself above guns. For me it was like finger nails on the blackboard when he talks about "silenced .357 semi-auto handguns" or "mercury filled .45 slugs leaving pock marks" in the stone around a fireplace or "a high powered Mossberg over and under." Grrrrrr. The .357 caliber is typically used in revolvers and it wouldn't be a good choice for use with a silencer because the bullet itself travels over the speed of sound and makes its own little sonic boom after it leaves the firearm. The mercury filled .45 might be a direct steal from Day of the Jackal but even if it isn't the point of the mercury would be to cause a tremendous amount of expansion of the bullet when it hit something. It shouldn't penetrate the victim and still have enough force to scar the brickwork around the fireplace. It should expend all of its energy in the victim. Finally the high powered Mossberg over and under would read much cleaner if it had been referred to as a Mossberg pump. Mossberg is famous for their low cost, high quality, high capacity, pump shotguns. Also "high power" is a term usually used for handguns and rifles, not for shotguns of any type. John Sandford gets this right in his "Prey" books. I do think I owe it to the author and myself to read another Tres Navarre book. Rick Riordan has won several mystery book awards which means you can't go too far wrong in buying one of his stories.
Rating: 
Summary: Intrigue in San Antonio
Review: I first read "The Widower's Two-Step" and was a little familiar with some of the characters. This book got a great review in the Dallas Morning News so, I decided to give it a shot. The writing is terrific. Riordan does marvelous descriptions of most of the characters and the various San Antonio neighborhoods. One gripe in the description department, what does Tres (the principal character) look like? Tres' physical appearance, other than his injuries, are glossed over. I want a picture of this guy, please. The mystery behind the murders is not all that puzzling. Riordan gives you a lot of clues before the final enlightenment. The characters in this book are fresh and different--not at all run-of-the-mill, and that includes the bad guys. If you are looking to escape from your everyday world and meet a decidedly cool teacher/private eye then, this is the book for you. People from his past and present collide in rather unexpected ways.
Rating:
Summary: Tres Navarre is back...and better than ever
Review: Rick Riordan does it again. Another fast-pace, edge of the seat mystery starring Tres Navarre...hunk of a P.I. who makes Spenser looks tame. This time he not only solves the case but finally gets to use that English PHD, teaching at UT San Antonio. Tres starts out trying to figure out who keeps killing English lit professors at UTSA and ends up uncovering gang and mob connections to drugs and amusement park rides. In the end he almost gets himself killed and finds out that the good guys you depend on aren't always who and what you think they are. On a happy note, he may have a new woman in his life. But we'll have to wait until the next book to find out for sure. This book is impossible to put down, a real page-turner with lots of excitement and surprises. A must read for mystery fans.
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