Rick Riordan is proving himself a master of what I've come to think of as the "claustrophobic thriller." "Cold Springs" particularly impressed me with its psychological pressure-cooker of emotions and repressed secrets. "Rebel Island" takes that a step further, with almost all the action in the story taking place inside a crumbling old hotel in the middle of a hurricane. In that sense, this story is like a classic English country-house mystery, where you know from the start that "one of us in this room is ... The Killer" (dum dum dum!). As Riordan's fans will expect, though, the author gives the genre a distinctive South Texas twist that makes "Rebel Island" one of the best Tres Navarre stories in some time.
One of Riordan's storytelling distinctions has always been the twisting plot, with suspicion pointing first one way and then another. As bodies turned up in these pages, I started making a list of who I thought the killer was. By the time I finally twigged to the right answer (satisfyingly close to the end of the book), I had identified and rejected three other candidates. And even then, the author had one or two final surprises in store.
Now that Riordan has been doing it for a couple of novels, I'm more used to his new convention of only narrating some of the story in Tres' first-person view. As with "Mission Road," this technique not only lets other characters participate in the story more fully (always in third-person), but also gives us a glimpse inside the mind of the still-unidentified killer. As I've noted before, telling the story this way necessarily means we get less of Tres than we might otherwise like, but it does help increase the tension and make the story more well-rounded.
In addition to being entertaining and well-written mystery novels, each of the Tres Navarre books has chronicled important changes in the character's life. The changes that have occurred between the last title and this one, however, are perhaps the biggest yet. Tres' long-term fans won't find many of the familiar characters that have made up his supporting cast to this point. As always, though, the case here ends up tugging on significant strings from Tres' own life. It's satisfying to know Tres is not static for Riordan -- the character continues to evolve and mature, and there's still more for readers to learn about his past, as well as his future.
After this fast moving (I read it in an afternoon and a morning) and satisfying story, I am once again looking forward to whatever the author has in store for us next.