Jackson "Tres" Navarre returns to San Antonio after a decade away in San Francisco, dragging along his bad-tempered cat, Robert Johnson, and a tangle of unfinished business. Ten years earlier his father, a county sheriff, was gunned down, and the killing was never solved. Back on home turf, Tres reconnects with his high-school sweetheart and starts pulling at the loose threads of the old case. What looks like history quickly turns dangerous: every question he asks seems to disturb people with interests in construction money, local politics, and organized crime, and soon he is being shot at, beaten, and run off the road. When someone close to him disappears, the personal stakes turn the investigation into a race against a brand of Texas justice that does not forgive outsiders. Tres is an unusual investigator: a third-generation Texan with a doctorate in medieval studies, a tai chi practitioner who works without a license, and a man drawn back to the city he tried to outrun. The novel grounds its mystery in San Antonio's neighborhoods, food, and family loyalties, balancing hardboiled action with a strong sense of place and the protagonist's wry, self-aware voice as he confronts the wreckage of his own past.