Big Red Tequila is the first novel in Rick Riordan

Rick Riordan

Richard Russell "Rick" Riordan, Jr. is an American author best known for writing the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series. He also wrote the Tres Navarre mystery series for adults and helped to edit Demigods and Monsters, a collection of essays on the topic of his Percy Jackson series...

's prizewinning Tres Navarre series. It is a fast-paced crime story about an unusually talented and flawed hero, Jackson "Tres" Navarre, a third generation Texan. Tres has a PhD

PHD

PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 from Berkeley in Medieval Studies and English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, works as an unlicensed private eye

Private investigator

A private investigator , private detective or inquiry agent, is a person who can be hired by individuals or groups to undertake investigatory law services. Private detectives/investigators often work for attorneys in civil cases. Many work for insurance companies to investigate suspicious claims...

, and is a t'ai chi master.

After ten years in the San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean...

 area, Tres Navarre returns home to San Antonio, Texas

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

to investigate the unsolved murder of his father, Bexar County sheriff

Sheriff

A sheriff is in principle a legal official with responsibility for a county. In practice, the specific combination of legal, political, and ceremonial duties of a sheriff varies greatly from country to country....

Jackson Navarre, and to rekindle a romance with his high school sweetheart, local art gallery owner Lillian Cambridge. The more Tres looks into the unsolved crime, the more trouble comes his way.

This novel won the Anthony Award for best original paperback and the Shamus Award for best First P.I. novel in 1997.