by Rick Riordan
ages: adult
First sentence: “Ana had to get the baby out of the house.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Even after my failed attempt to read Southtown, I wanted to finish out Tres Navarre’s story. Mission Road didn’t sound like such the gritty story, and so I picked it up, hoping for the same sort of thrilling mystery that Riordan had delivered before.

Tres Navarre has settled into a bit of a routine: visit his girlfriend Maia up in Austin, take care of his resident ex-FBI housemate, take a PI job here and there, try not to get killed in the process. But when his old friend Ralph Arguello shows up at Tres’s back door shaking, covered in blood, and accused of being his wife’s, Sargeant Ana DeLeon, shooter, there’s only one thing Tres can do: help him.

That makes Tres a fugitive from the law: he and Ralph have 48 hours to figure out who shot Ana, and solve a cold case from 1987. Because the two are inevitably connected. This, of course, involves getting the help of a notorious San Antonio mob boss, who also happens to be the father of the murder victim in the 1987 case.

Interestingly enough, Tres is more of a pawn in this book than an actual participant. It’s Maia who does all the legwork, getting the information, and actually is the one who solved both crimes. She’s the one who had the intense face-down with the suspect, who put the puzzle pieces together while Tres and Ralph were running around creating a nice diversion while trying to save their necks. I didn’t mind this at all; I like Tres, but I’ve decided that I like Maia more. She’s a tough, intelligent, interesting woman; full of power and vulnerability in all the right ways. It also helped that Tres and Ralph hooked up with another intriguing, complicated woman — Madeline White, daughter of the mob boss — which spiced up their run for their lives.

Even with these two women, the book is populated with less-than-lovely characters. There’s an interesting division between bad and truly evil, between skirting the law and doing unspeakable crimes. Riordan handles something that could be really disturbing — the rape and murder of multiple young women — with sensitivity; the book never crosses over into the truly graphic, which makes it go down easier. First and foremost is saving Tres and Ralph, and by extension, Ralph’s wife and year-old daughter.

As for the mystery: I kind of figured it out halfway through, but only one part of it. There’s a really nice twist in the very last chapter, one that was surprising, but made sense given the characters and the plot.

Very satisfying.