Set in San Antonio, The Last King of Texas plunges the reader into the interplay of the Latino and Anglo culture. A university has had its second English professor (Aaron Brandon) die within the same school term. Threatening notes had heralded their passing…notes that alluded to the alleged racism of the school toward the Hispanic population.

University officials contact the private detective agency Tres works for and contract for their services. The university feels that since Tres Navarre is a private investigator he should be able to stay alive and complete the term. In the midst of an interview where they are trying to convince Tres to take the part-time teaching job, the mail is delivered and an amateurish pipe bomb is detonated. Although he was about to refuse the position, Tres now changes his mind, explaining that he is annoyed by death threats.

Quickly, he meets Detective Ana Deleon, the Latino homicide investigator who has been assigned to the Aaron Brandon murder. Brandon, who was killed by multiple gunshots, was the last professor to occupy the position that Tres is filling.

Racial tension within the police department is highlighted with snappy, sarcastic dialogue meant to be funny. A weakness in the book is that Riordan defines his characters by their dialogue rather than fleshing them out in the usual manner. Thus, the whole novel is from one point of view only…that of Tres, and as such it becomes a litany of how he perceives people reacting to him.

As Tres begins to investigate Brandon’s death, his multicultural agency begins an investigation of its own, starting with the unsolved murder of Brandon’s father. This opens a real can of worms, introducing us to drug trafficking, family rivalries that become murderous, and a young missing Latina who had been an alleged victim of the usual sexual perversions of “The King.”

The plot, which is complicated but predictable, weaves in and out of the Latino-Anglo community, highlighting socio-economic discrepancies and prejudices. The story line moves quickly once Detective Ana agrees to an unwanted investigatory partnership with Tres -- a partnership initiated when her department identifies a Latino thug as the perpetrator and closes the case.

This is a hard-hitting, gritty mystery with tough characters that rush headlong toward a resolution with ever-increasing speed. A change in tempo or pacing of the story and occasional shifts in the point of view were badly needed. Even an average read requires credible characters whose development is based on more than snappy dialogue. Without these, the story is mired in a one-dimensional frame. And since it could also be said that The Last King of Texas is a novel of revenge and redemption, a little softness on the redemption side would have helped to make it a more well-rounded novel.

--Thea Davis