The Widower's Two-Step

Riordan focuses on the music world in this second Tres Nevarre mystery. Nevarre is only 10 hours (or so) away from completing his apprenticeship and getting his official PI license. But he gets entangled in a case of a missing music producer, and can’t just let it go. I really like the character of Tres Nevarre – a tai-chi master with a PhD in medieval English, and a cool head when faced with a dangerous situation. However, the plot gets really convoluted here and doesn’t move fast enough for me. While Riordan has the skill to write in such a way as to keep me turning pages, I though it took too long to set-up the case and I was losing interest. He’s also guilty of one of my biggest pet peeves – he gets the geography of the show more city wrong. I’m a native of San Antonio … he has the characters driving south on a major thoroughfare, passing a famous landmark and then turning right (west) onto another major street. Except that the street they turn right onto in the book, is actually several blocks NORTH of the landmark they have supposedly passed before making the turn. A reader not familiar with the territory won’t be bothered by this; it’s a tiny little scene in a 365 page book. But little details like this drive me nuts when the author gets it wrong (and Riordan is a native of the area in question, so he definitely knows better). That little paragraph lost him a star in my book. show less

Tres is becoming more interesting now. Still walking the border of self-destruction, but perhaps seeking handholds in this world. This story revolves around the country music life in Texas. The mystery is not so difficult, or unsolvable, but it is fun going there with Tres Navarre. There was a nice bit of character analysis in this story, why we do the things we do sometimes and how people deceive us into doing them. The story also made me laugh out loud several times, and that is something I look for in my mysteries. I look forward to the next story, where Tres tries his hand at being a college professor.

This is a fun mystery in the same vein as Elvis Cole or Spenser. Granted, Tres Navarre is not in the same league as Cole or Spenser, and the plot twists are a little too convoluted for my tastes, but all-in-all a fun way to spend a weekend.

This book opens with Tres Navarre on a surveillance of a woman whom Tres suspects of stealing an audio recording of a musicians's session. When that woman is assassinated while he's watching her, Tres has to solve the mystery of why she was the target, even though he is warned off the case buy multiple people, including his employer. This leads his to interview all sorts in the music scene in San Antonio and Austin and leads his to more mayhem and fun for the reader.

For an ol' Texas girl, this was a fun mystery.