Tres Navarre
Reading Order.

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 missing demo and Julie's murder are just two of the problems besetting Miranda Daniels, a pint-sized singer with Texas-sized talent. She's the prize in a tug-of-war between two music hotshots who want to manage her career. One has a habit of making bad things happen to people he doesn't like. The other has just vanished without a trace. As Tres looks into the dirty dealings surrounding Miranda, it becomes clear he's stepped into a rattlesnakes' nest of greed, double cross, and murder—and he may be the next to be snakebit.

In a terrific sequel to The Widower's Two-Step, which won the 1999 Edgar for Best Original Paperback, the third Tres Navarre mystery finds the academic-turned-PI reluctant to accept a chair in medieval studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio, a chair whose last two tenants have met with violent deaths. But when a bomb goes off in the dean's office nearly killing him and two others, he instantly accepts the assignment. Tres quickly finds out that the second victim's father, Jeremiah Brandon, a ruthless amusement-park ride manufacturer known as the "King of the Carnivals," was also murdered years before. The prime suspect then was Jeremiah's former employee, gang member Zeta Sanchez, who believed that the predatory Jeremiah was sleeping with his wife, but Sanchez was never apprehended. Suddenly it is reported that, after years on the run (and in a Mexican jail), he has been spotted in the region. Tagging along with the San Antonio police, Tres finds himself in the middle of a violent shoot-out during which Sanchez is arrested; now he is also the number one suspect in the murder of Jeremiah's son. Not surprisingly, Sanchez vigorously protests his innocence. All this happens in just the first 40 pages of this fast-paced and highly entertaining novel, as Tres finds himself drawn into the complex vortex of the Brandon family's ugly past. With the help of beautiful yet tough homicide detective Ana DeLeon (a potential romantic interest) and other, less than savory, friends from the wrong side of the law, the wisecracking Tres untangles an intricate web of murderous family rivalries, missing persons and heroin traffic--all the while evoking with bright color the interplay of San Antonio's Latino and Anglo cultures and the joys of Tex-Mex cuisine. (Jan.)

Tres Navarre goes to Austin to teach a summer session when his brother Garett's oldest friend and business partner is murdered, leaving Garett as the only suspect, so Tres investigates to clear his brother's name.

For Tres Navarre, English professor turned private investigator, business has lately taken a drastic turn south. But if chasing down bail jumpers, adulterous spouses, and workmen's comp cases seemed like the dregs of the PI game, it was at least a living. Not as much could be said for tracking down a man like Will "the Ghost" Stirman.The stone-cold killer has just staged a bloody escape from the Floresville State Penitentiary with a gang of violent cons as spooked by Stirman as those on the outside who helped put him behind bars. And no one seems more worried than Navarre's boss and mentor, Erainya Manos. It was her husband along with rival PI Sam Barrera who built the case that sent Stirman away. But Erainya's husband is dead and she's certain Stirman won't let that stand in the way of his taking revenge against her and her adopted son.All of Navarre's instincts are screaming that there's more to this case than meets the eye. But Erainya won't tell him--and Sam Barrera seems to be escaping into a strange twilight from a truth too terrible to remember. That leaves Tres to dig into a twisted mystery of greed, vigilantism, and murder, where lives are bought and sold and the line between guilt and innocence is razor-thin. Meanwhile, Stirman and his gang are coming, leaving behind them a trail of brutal, unforgiving violence that will end in an area of San Antonio known as Southtown--but that may soon just as well be called hell on earth.From the Hardcover edition.

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.

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.From the Hardcover edition.