The Devil Went Down to Austin

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By Rick Riordan

Publisher Description

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series

Rick Riordan, triple-crown winner of the Edgar, Anthony, and Shamus Awards, brings his fast-talking, hard-living, Texas-hip P.I. Tres Navarre to the heart of the Lone Star State—Austin—to unravel a case so dark, twisted, and deadly, it can only involve family....

Tres Navarre, the P.I. with a Ph.D. in literature, heads to Austin for a laid-back summer teaching gig. But he’s in store for a whole lot more. His big brother Garrett--computer whiz, Jimmy Buffett fanatic, and all-around eccentric—is hoping to retire a multimillionaire by the fall. He’s bet his career and the Navarre family ranch to do it.

Then Garrett’s oldest friend and business partner is murdered—and Garrett is the only suspect. As Tres delves into Garrett’s bizarre world to find the truth behind the murder, he comes face to face with the damaged relationships, violent lives, and billion-dollar schemes of a high-tech world gone haywire. Connecting them all is beautiful Lake Travis and the shocking secret that lies within its depths. Now, as Tres struggles with his own troubled family past and to clear his brother’ s name, he finds himself stalked by a cold-blooded killer—one who could spell the death of both Navarres.

Don’t miss any of these hotter-than-Texas-chili Tres Navarre novels:
BIG RED TEQUILA • THE WIDOWER’S TWO-STEP • THE LAST KING OF TEXAS • THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO AUSTIN • SOUTHTOWN • MISSION ROAD • REBEL ISLAND

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4 Reviews

4.5

BeeDUBS8

Created 7 months ago

Kirsten Muller

Created 10 months ago

“Another compelling adventure with Tres Navarre! Like with most of the other Tres Navarre books, this book was exciting. Almost too exciting. You almost feel like too much happened - not that I'm complaining, of course:) This book definitely kept moving with a lot of twists and turns (though how well he allows the reader to potentially predict said twists is something I will discuss more in a bit). I recently read a comment on Reddit saying that books four and six are the best ones. I guess have to hold off on that until I've read the whole series, but I can see why the commenter said that. At the moment, this book is probably tied with book three as my favorite; but, again, I'll wait until finishing the series before giving my official ranking. This book is the first in the series so far that hasn't featured Ralph. I was both glad and sad about that. Like I said in my review of the last book, I like him, but I didn't want him to become a crutch. So, not having him in this book might actually be a good thing. We'll see if he appears in future books. This book is also the first book since the first one that has Maya in it (about which I was glad). There was a passing mention in one of the last two books (I think it was book three, but I can't remember for sure, it could've been book two) of a voicemail from Maya that he ignored. Other than that, she'd been ignored for the last two books. I'm kind of glad they basically got together. Their separation at the end of the first book seemed kind of out of the blue. Finally, this book is the first one in which we get sections that are not from Tres's first-person POV. We get a small section from Maya's third-person limited POV. And we get the e-mails from the killer. That part was interesting. Speaking of the e-mails, they honestly kind of confused me, but that may be the nature of the audiobook. I didn't get whom he was sending then to, or the point of them for a while. Especially when the killer talked as if he witnessed events he didn't witness. How did he find out information he probably couldn't have known? Were these events in the papers? Who was the girl on the hunting trip with her father (which made me think the killer was a woman for a bit tbh)? It was just jarring. Now on to Garrett Navarre (no idea if one or two "r's", or one or two "t's"). Of course I never thought he was guilty (the book wouldn't have made sense otherwise). But, like Tres for pretty much the whole book, I was baffled by how nonchalant he was being about everything. And he seemed to be doing everything to not help his case. Like, why in the world did he not tell anyone that he was the recipient of the emails? You'd rather let yourself get blamed for murder than admit to your minor programming-related crime (which Tres himself says)? Seriously. I like that he kept the parrot he got from Tres back in the second book, but pretty much everything else he did in this book made me want to facepalm. Finally, I really enjoyed the character of Victor Lopez. Your view of him when he's first introduced completely changes by the end. That was well done. Going into more detail about this would involve discussing major spoilers. Adding to that, discussing pretty much any of my other thoughts about the book would involve discussing the identity of the killer and too many other spoilers. So, I won't put them here. Except for one thing...I have repeatedly mentioned liking all the twists and turns in these books. And I stand by that statement. That being said, like I said above, I don't feel like the average reader could reasonably guess what those twists will be until maybe right before they're revealed. The sign of a well-written twist is the ability to do that (predict it, that is). If you can't do that, it's not really a twist - it's just kind of an out-of-the-blue revelation. Which is not the same thing. I feel like most or all of the twists in these books belong to the latter category instead of the former. Or maybe I'm just dumb and/or not paying attention, and you CAN predict these twists. You decide. All in all, still a great read. Excited to continue the series as per usual and see how things turn out. Let's keep this crazy train going!”

Ali Bourikas

Created 12 months ago

Courtney Somerville

Created about 11 years ago

About Rick Riordan

Rick Riordan is the author of three previous Tres Navarre novels -- Big Red Tequila, winner of the Shamus and Anthony Awards; The Widower's Two-Step, winner of the Edgar Award; and The Last King of Texas. A middle-school English teacher by day, Riordan lives with his wife and family in San Antonio, Texas.