Multiple-award-winning author Rick Riordan brings back smart-mouthed Texas P.I. Tres Navarre for his most dangerous case yet. If you think the academic world is deadly dull, you're half right....

When a controversial English professor is found shot to death, Tres Navarre — P.I. and Ph.D. — is the only local academic crazy enough to accept the emergency opening at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Police assure him they already have a suspect, so while they 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 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 — and lands in a high-stakes game of gangster honor on the darkest streets of San Antonio's West Side....

"Raise your margarita to Rick Riordan....This tale of revenge and remorse sizzles and skids like drops of water on a hot skillet."
- Texas Monthly

"Starts off with a literal bang and then gathers speed from there."
- Entertainment Weekly

"If not the king of Texas crime writing, Rick Riordan is certainly among the princes in a royal family that already includes James Lee Burke."
- The Denver Post

"Riordan writes so well about the people and topography of his Texas hometown that he quickly marks the territory as his own."
- Chicago Tribune

Don't miss the spicy Tex-Mex flavor of the first two Tres Navarre novels:

Big Red Tequila

Winner of the Shamus and Anthony Awards and

The Widower's Two-Step

Winner of the Edgar Award

Available from bantam books

And coming soon his next Tres Navarre novel

"Raise your margarita to Rick Riordan.... This tale of revenge and remorse sizzles and skids like drops of water on a hot skillet."—Texas Monthly

"Starts off with a literal bang and then gathers speed from there."—Entertainment Weekly

"If not the king of Texas crime writing, Rick Riordan is certainly among the princes in a royal family that already includes James Lee Burke."— Denver Post

"Riordan writes so well about the people and topography of his Texas hometown that he quickly marks the territory as his own."—Chicago Tribune

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.