Customer Reviews

Big Red Tequila

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This was the first mystery book that wasn't just about a brutal murderer or sick person. This was a murder, that wasn't a serial killer, not the kind of thing that would give you nightmares. It was just a normal guy's life mixed in with the capture of his ex-girlfriend. I loved every word of the story, and Robert Johnson was an incredibly clever character! I recommend this book to anyone who has half a sense of humor and the need to read a cleverly put together story that feels like it's coming right from the person's mouth!

Big Red Tequila is one of the funniest, smartest, slickest books I've read in a long time. Riordan does a fabulous job of imbuing his work with the sights, smells and sounds of San Antonio, and his characters seem incredibly real and multi-dimensional (even the bad guys!). The dialog crackles with wit and little details like the enchilada-eating cat and the half-brother with a passion for Jimmy Buffet's music just add to the entertainment. While the actual "mystery" in this book is perfectly adequate, to me it was almost secondary. I found the real fun was tagging along with Tres as he criss-crossed the city of San Antonio from La Villita to Monte Verde to the most exclusive neighborhoods with their gated entrances (which, of course, he always managed to talk his way into). I can't wait to read the rest of the series. Highly recommended!

For those of you who love the John D. McDonald books starring Travis McGee, let me introduce you to Tres Navarre! The hero of Riordan's first book in the series, Tres reminds me of a young Trav McGee. He has a bit of dark edge to his character (he's lived a lot!), and his smart mouth gets him into trouble, but he's a decent, intelligent man who wants to find the truth and protect the innocent. In that way, he also reminds me of Dave Robichaux in the James Lee Burke Novels. Like McDonald and Burke, Riordan does a great job at presenting a particular culture and location, in this case San Antonio, Texas, and in developing very three-dimensional characters. I can highly recommend this book.

In this debut novel, Tres returns to San Antonio after having fled ten years previously after the murder of his father. He returns to wrestle with his past and to find the truth behind his father's death. In the process, he uncovers a conspiracy that involves families he's known all his life, forcing him to weigh love, loyalty, and compassion against the truth.

What a hoot this was to read. As a Texan, I especially appreciated the "laid back" flavor of this charming and "out there" book. Tres Navarre has enough cowboy in him to be charming and enough intellectual ability to be much more than a cartoonish hero! Imagine a PhD in English who loves cats with peculiar eating habits and spikes his Big Red with good tequila...hard to fathom but tons of fun. Tres gets himself in so much trouble trying to figure out who killed his sheriff-father ten years earlier, but he has a tremendous support system including his aging but gorgeous beatnik mother and his savvy lawyer ex-girlfriend from California. Tres is a complicated man. As soon as I finished this book, I grabbed up The Widower's Two-Step and devoured it as well. Can't wait to read the Last King of Texas. I only noticed a couple of things that didn't ring true, like the mis-spelling of the name of a prominent Texas family from the King Ranch. The Klaybergs referred were actually the Kleburgs, but then maybe Riordan changed the spelling intentionally--don't know--and it doesn't change anything of significance in the story. This was a good read. I recommend Tres Navarre and his friends to everyone with a taste for fun and adventure.

Fans of Harlan Coben's Myron Bolitar series are likely to find another quasi-hero to root for in the Tres Navarre series. They are both late twentysomething white guys who can't quite shed their family and roots. The locations are different but both are players in the plots.

Normally I don't care for Texas settings in novel (it's a Colorado thing) but this one works. Much of that has to do with Navarre's having spent ten years in the Bay Area (where the writer, Riordan, a Texas native, lives). It's a nice mixture of cravings for Peet's coffee while drinking Big Red soda cut with tequila. Navarre is a pretty likeable guy - and is the first guy shamus with a cat that I can recall.

The mystery is only worth three stars as it is a bit muddled and has a few too many players. Still, a fun read and I'm looking forward to the second book in the series, The Widower's Two Step. It should also be noted that the book won Anthony and Shamus awards as well as making the Washington Post year-end list.

I picked up on the Tres Navarre series by Rick Riordan in the middle, with Southtown, which was an incredible novel with indelible characters and a page-turning mystery plot. I had to check out this series from the beginning, and The Big Red Tequila, the first book in the series, didn't disappoint me.

Tres Navarre is returning to his hometown of San Antonio after years in California. Two things draw him back--the longing to find out if a perfect romance from early in his life can be rekindled, and the need to find out who killed his father, a law enforcement officer who was gunned down in front of Tres when he was 13.

I love everything about this book--from the real feel of the setting (I've never been to San Antonio but can hear/smell/feel/taste it from the descriptions) to the dialogue, to the memorable characters who are no where near perfect but still likeable people--except for the bad guys, who are suitably vicious. I even love Tres' insane cat, Robert Johnson.

I went right on to the next book in the series (Widowers Two Step) and liked it just as much. Can't wait to read more of this author!

A student of Tai Chi, a man unfazed by the confrontation of violent enemies, the owner of a cat named Robert Johnson, Tres Navarre is introduced in Big Red Tequila, the first book in Rick Riordan's hardboiled Texas series. Tres Navarre is an unlicensed private investigator, tequila drinker and all around nice guy. But he's also troubled by the past and when he sets about easing his mind, more than a few feathers or going to get ruffled.

As the story opens, Tres has returned to San Antonio after a 10 year absence and is nonchalantly throwing the previous tenant out of the house he is now renting. Immediately we are confronted with a guy who is very capable with his hands, won't back down from a fight and the nonchalance is the way he performs most tasks. Add to that a vague air of amusement and the character of Tres Navarre is virtually complete.

Tres is back in San Antonio at the request of Lillian Cambridge, the girl with whom he was madly in love with and had plans to marry 10 years before. She's one of the few people pleased to see him come home with quite a number of very lukewarm greetings received. A lot of people still haven't forgiven him for his decision to suddenly leave town after watching his father get gunned down on his front doorstep.

Anyway, he's back, Lillian's overjoyed and he's determined to solve his father's murder which had remained unsolved all these years. Suddenly Lillian goes missing, her business partner looks to be connected to one of San Antonio's wealthiest families in some kind of shady deal and the death rate has suddenly spiked, particularly among people who may have been able to help Tres solve his father's murder. Tres has effectively poked an anthill with a stick and the inhabitants are not the slightest bit happy about it. What follows is a stirring thriller combining the heart pounding desperation of a kidnapping case with a complex story of corruption that spreads through major development contracts, big business and politics, all tied in to a 10 year old murder.

Rick Riordan employs a delightful style, whipping the story along at a cracking pace ensuring that the story is always interesting. The characters cover a wide range of classes and personalities, from the millionaire pawn-broker who has fought his way out of the slums to Tres' legless half-brother computer whiz, each is refreshingly unique. In his own laid back demeanour Tres himself is an engaging character giving the impression to friends and enemies alike to be an amiable feller, but when pushed he is not above taking action with deadly consequences.

Perhaps the most difficult thing to reconcile about Tres Navarre is the Teflon-like qualities he possesses. Nothing ever seems to stick to the guy. Failed relationships, murdered father, killing a man, they all seem to slide straight off him with nary a second thought. I don't like getting bogged down by an extended bout of depression and introspection on the part of the protagonist but can handle the odd mourning period - it makes them human. But heck, it just seems a little inhuman to show no emotion whatsoever, and believe me, Navarre goes through enough trauma here to stop ten men cold.

By way of introducing Tres Navarre and the city of San Antonio, Big Red Tequila has a lot to like about it. It's hardboiled and uncompromising, it moves fast with a well-constructed storyline that runs through to a satisfying, if somewhat too conveniently neat, ending. It's the kind of book that invites you to return for another visit with the promise that you will be entertained.

Okay, never mind that I'm a native, although displaced, Texan. (Never mind too that I agree with Riordan there's something majestic about the wide open spaces marked by not much more than dirt, rocks, and scrub because at night the enormous sky that envelops this same desert from horizon to horizon is marked by more stars than you ever believed could exist in this universe and because anyone who has ever seen this same sky painted in reds and golds and oranges and lavenders and deep purples can't believe they're still on our planet!) I just love the Texas and the San Antonio that is brought to life in the Tres Navarre series!

Riordan's plots are complicated enough and sharp enough to please the reader that likes to keep guessing right up to the end about what's really happening in the story. And Riordan is a natural at the surprise ending -- and a convincing surprise ending at that!)

But for those of us who welcome a new group of characters that we can tell are interesting enough, complex enough, intriguing enough and funny enough to last us through many, many more books to come -- that's the most rewarding gift of all.

The hero is just the right kind of funny, self-effacing fellow who never comes off as pompous; never tries to be the superior, wise-cracking, smug, know-it-all detective who spends most of the story showing the reader just how verbal he is compared to the moronic bad guys (so, who cares? By the end of these books, the hero's ego has taken over every scene to the extent that you start cheering for the other side!)

Tres is caring, sensitive, etc. without being schmaltzy about it. His machoism is largely confined to an intelligent appreciation of eastern philosophy and the practice of the kind of martial arts that demand incredible discipline and, above all, humility.

And some of my favorites are the little gems he drops (at least in the two books I've read so far) when he addresses either inanimate objects ( e.g., he beseeches his bright orange VW, that is standing there beside him in a pasture when he's trying to surreptitiously tail someone, to "Think cow....") or addresses otherwise somewhat indifferent animals that happen to be nearby (e.g. as when-- in another pasture, this time with a real cow standing there -- as he gets ready to sneak up on the villains and he turns to the cow and says, "Cover me..." Now you know Tres doesn't really count on these other sources for realistic help. But Riordan gives you the feeling that--with his laid back, eastern style perspective on things -- Tres isn't averse to accepting whatever extra help the universe might be willing to offer.

If you've had it with detective stories in which nothing is really going on for 3/4 of the story as the detective futilely searches for clues in a no-nonsense, professional style--forcing you to read the entire book only to make sure that something eventually happens in it--you'll love the Tres Navarre series. The characters and subplots are so entertaining that the complex plot with the surprise ending is just icing on the cake.

Rick Riordan has written his first book, BIG RED TEQUILA, with the verve and confidence of an experienced author with several successful mysteries published to his credit. His short, action-filled sentences easily carry the reader along from one suspenseful chapter to the next without a stumble or loss of interest. He uses familiar words in unfamiliar association. He creates clear pictures of the scene and characters involved. He avoids the usual cliches which become so common-place in many mysteries. There is a definite "newness" about his writing. His Texan use of Spanish is particularly well done and faithfully reflects the cultural ambience of the City of San Antonio. It gives better definition to memorable personalities without dressing them in masquerade costumes. I appreciate his handling of sexual encounters. His short comments like, "back to the satin sheets," give the reader no difficulty in picturing the activity of the characters without a clinical, play-by-play account. Nor do I wish to be a voyuer. His vernacular which may seem a bit profane to some readers like me (past 75 years), is honest and genuine and will be overheard on most every bi-cultural street in the Southwest. Of greatest importance to me, I enjoyed reading the book. Isn't that its purpose?

i just read this book for the second time in as many days. this guy has a real gift for writing, from the snappy dialog and wry characterizations to the description of his old hometown. the plot (rescuing an old girlfriend from the bad guys who turn out to be a little too familiar for comfort) was maybe a bit predictable, but the writing was so stylish that it didn't matter. i loved tres, his gutsy discipline and his unwillingness to back down from anything, and i'm hoping to hear more about robert johnson, his feline sidekick, in the next book. garrett provided an interesting undertone as the older brother who occasionally overloads on reality. altogether a very slick, quick read. well done, mr. riordan!