"REBEL ISLAND" by Rick Riordan (A-)

When I first read the inside of the book cover and found out that Rick Riordan has won all three detective writing awards (the Edgar, the Anthony, and the Shamus) for his earlier Tres Navarre novels, I quickly came to the conclusion that here is an author that I ought to check out.

So, I picked up this latest novel in the Tres Navarre series only to find out that Tres has given up his profession and is now embarking on a happy retirement with Maia, his new bride. What rotten luck! Is this the last of the Tres Navarre series? Only Riordan knows for sure, but I can hope for more to come. After all, Riordan and his alter ego both need a paycheck, and in this story Tres has yet to formulate a plan for a new career after supposedly having retired from the private eye business.

This book is a fine read, not only because Riordan is an accomplished writer, but also because this story is infused with the heavy brew of its locale on the Gulf Coast of Texas. The rich Texas atmosphere gives this story a flavor unlike any other private eye book that I have read. This is not to be unexpected, as every story will be affected by the landscape with the characters in that story even more so.

It is only natural that a story based in Texas is going to have a far different flavor than one based in Los Angeles, New York City, or even Vermont. Riordan, who lives in San Antonio, can certainly be expected to have a writing style influenced by where he lives. It is only natural to use one's home area as the setting for the novels. The characters will then become more realistic since they are speaking the local idiom and using the linguistic flavor of that part of the country. That comes with the territory, and in this instance Texas is a pretty gritty territory filled with outsized heroes and villains.

One can almost smell the heavy, humid salt water air in this tale of a honeymoon from hell where Tres and Maia check into a musty hotel on a small coastal island with the miserable luck of checking in just as an out of season hurricane hits the island. The occupants of the hotel are stranded and left to fend for themselves. As if the roaring hurricane doesn't present enough of a problem with the windows crashing in, the roof blowing away piece by piece, and the sea rising up to reclaim this flea-bitten spit of sand. A body turns up and then everyone is forced to the shocking realization that one of the residents at the now isolated hotel is a murderer and that there will be no escape.

This story is similar to "Ten Little Indians" by Agatha Christie with the remaining guests of the hotel left to wonder which one in their midst is a killer and whether or not they will be his next victim. Not everyone is who they claim to be, and like Ms. Christie's other novel, "Murder on the Orient Express," many of the hotel's occupants are there for hidden reasons that further evidence the complex personal relationships in this backwater area of Texas.

The first victim is Jesse Langoria, the hard ass sheriff of the county, who was there to mete out his own brand of justice to an unknown criminal. However, someone has found him first, and now he lies dead with a bullet through his head. All of this has happened before the sun has set on the first night of Tres and Maia's honeymoon. Not that it is to be much of a honeymoon, as Maia is eight months pregnant. Now Tres has to worry about Maia going into an early delivery before they can be rescued after the hurricane has passed.

Tres should have known better, but his older brother, Garrett, talked him into going back to the same hotel where they had vacationed as a family many years before. The Rebel Island Hotel was built in the Nineteenth century by a Civil War veteran, Colonel Duncan Bray. He never considered surrendering his island to the Union, thus the island's name. Tres never liked the place, as his parents had fought violently and then separated while vacationing there when he and Garrett were kids. Furthermore, Alex Huff, who now owns the hotel, also visited Rebel Island, and he used to terrorize Tres when they were teenagers.

Now the aged structure is in danger of collapse from the hurricane, and the residents don't know what to fear more; that, or being killed by someone in their midst who is a mad bomber in league with the Mexican drug cartels. The owner, Alex Huff, has a lot to worry about as he scurries around trying to placate his guests on the one hand and keeping the place from falling apart with the other. 2007, Bantam Books, 339 pages.