The Last King of Texas

Tres Navarre has a passion for tequila, a Ph.D. in English literature, and a penchant for trouble. He's the smart-mouthed Texas private eye who raked in the Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony Awards. Now acclaimed author Rick Riordan fires up the accelerator in Tres Navarre's hardcover debut--a ninety-mile-an-hour thriller for fans with a taste for Spenser and Elvis Cole, spiced with habañero-hot Tex-Mex flavor.

When a controversial English professor is found dead, shot twice in the chest with a .45, Tres Navarre--P.I. and erstwhile Berkeley Ph.D.--is the only local academic crazy enough to accept the emergency opening at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Police assure Tres they already have a suspect, a stone-cold killer who's just returned from a stint in a Mexican jail and is suspected of murdering a Texas amusement-park kingpin years before. While the police wrap up the open-and-shut case, all Tres has to do is teach three classes, grade on a curve...and walk in a dead man's shoes. It should be an easy assignment.

But one thing Tres Navarre doesn't do is easy. When the evidence in the case starts looking a little too perfect, when the killing doesn't stop, Tres takes on some extracurricular research into the heart of an assassin. He quickly becomes embroiled in a nasty tangle of family secrets, backstabbing squabbles for control of a million-dollar amusement ride business, and a high-stakes game of gangster honor on the darkest streets of San Antonio's West Side. Behind it all--the specter of a murdered man who once proclaimed himself the King of the South Texas carnivals.

As fast-paced as the Texas Tornadoes, as funny as Lyle Lovett crossed with Kinky Friedman, as soulful as Willie Nelson, The Last King of Texas is an unforgettable, impossible-to-put-down whirlwind of suspense...in which everyone is guilty of something.


The cops already have a suspect in the murder of Tres's predecessor at the University of Texas at San Antonio--a stone-cold killer who's spent six years in prison for murdering an amusement-park kingpin.  Now Tres takes on some extracurricular research into the heart of an assassin. Suddenly he's on a carousel-ride collision course with a killer--a one-way ticket to betrayal and death in a novel of suspense in which everyone is guilty of something.

Lean, mean, and completely lovable, Jackson "Tres" Navarre is a worthy successor to Spenser and Elvis Cole; THE LAST KING OF TEXAS is an impossible-to-put-down whirlwind of a book; and Rick Riordan is the hottest new star in the suspense firmament. -->

Rick Riordan is the author of two previous Tres Navarre novels--Big Red Tequila, winner of the Shamus and Anthony Awards, and The Widower's Two-Step, winner of the Edgar Award. A middle-school English teacher by day, Riordan lives with his wife and family in San Antonio, Texas, where he is at work on his fourth Tres Navarre novel.