The fifth novel in Rick Riordan's
Tres Navarre series is entitled
Southtown and provides another fast-paced and thrilling adventure in the life of Jackson "Tres" Navarre. Tres, part-time private investigator and part-time professor of literature, is part tough guy and part renaissance man - a bit of an everyman, just trying to live his life, but he keeps getting into situations that his conscience won't allow him to walk away from. Once that happens he becomes like a dog who won't let go of a bone. This story begins when a small cadre of hardened criminals orchestrates a jailbreak from their prison outside of San Antonio. The leader of this group, Will Stirman, was once the head of a major human trafficking ring. This animal was a murderer, a rapist, and a drug kingpin. This is one man who has a long memory of anyone and everyone who has ever crossed him and means to erase some names from his list. When word of his escape hits the news, Tres' boss at the investigations agency, Erainya Manos, a normally unflappable woman, seems strangely affected, afraid for her own life as well as for her adopted son.
As Tres begins to piece together the past, he learns that Erainya's husband was part of the team that brought Stirman to justice some ten years ago. We have known for some time that Erainya killed her abusive husband just a short time after Stirman's arrest. However, we finally come to understand the real reason why she pulled the trigger when she did, a secret that she has been kept buried and has refused to talk about. In time we come to understand that it is directly connected to Stirman and what happened on the night of his capture. An intriguing story where the dividing lines between black and white are not always so clear and where good people can make bad choices that define them and where bad people can make good choices that help to redeem them. I now move on to the sixth novel in this enjoyable series,
Mission Road.
