The Widower's Two-Step by Rick Riordan

Reading is like eating.

It's not good for you to have the same kind of food all the time. A hamburger now and then can be a treat, but if that's all you ate you would start yearning for a meal that requires a knife and fork. Pizza is fun, but if you ate it continually you would start craving a salad. Complex gourmet dishes with interesting sauces and textures are delicious, but a steady diet of such food would make you feel sluggish and bloated. And some foods are just so yucky they shouldn't be eaten at all--potted meat and spray-can "cheese," for example.

I am convinced that if you read the same kind of books all the time you will have similar results. Light, strictly plot-driven books are fun to read, but after too many your mind becomes mushy and craves more substantial fare. Too many complex books which are slow reading and examine serious issues can tire your brain and sometimes make you slightly depressed. And occasionally books come along which shouldn't be read by anyone, ever.

This is a pizza book: It's fun, it's quickly and easily consumed, and it's a bit spicy, but not too much. And not just a cheese pizza either, but one with several toppings and a well-made crust. Not the best pizza you ever ate, but very good all the same.

It's a detective novel in the style of Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, with a smart-talking hero, sultry sirens, and violent villains. But Rick Riordan's detective Tres Navarre is a kinder, gentler version of Hammett's Sam Spade and Chandler's Phillip Marlowe. He is also more educated, having a PhD from Berkley in medieval literature, as well as being a private investigator.

Tres is called in to shadow a musician who is suspected of stealing a demo tape of an up-and-coming female country singer in an attempt to sabotage her signing with a major record label. Simple, right? Then the suspect is shot and killed right before his eyes. How can he help himself--he has to continue investigating. Along the way, he encounters many musicians, German-speaking tough guys, two enticing females, multiple murders, several double crosses, surprising twists, and a money-making scheme much more complicated than he ever expected.

Riordan has done a good job, following the standard mystery formula. His hero is interesting and the dialogue is stylish and often quite humorous. The violence, while somewhat graphic, is tastefully handled. The surprise twists are not all surprising, but the plot plays out logically and all the loose ends are tied up.

But it's the details which made the book fascinating to me. Many of the characters must be portraits of people Riordan actually knew, because they are so life-like. His descriptions of various Austin locations and neighborhoods are spot-on perfect (been there, done that), and I suspect the same is true of his descriptions of San Antonio. He is particularly adept at conveying the distinct flavors of the two cities, so close to each other and yet so different in many ways.

Riordan is no Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, but he writes a good mystery. This one won the Edgar Award from The Mystery Writers of America. Recommended.