Description
Michael McGarrity is a New Mexican author and former deputy sheriff of Santa Fe county. He received degrees from the University of New Mexico and the University of Iowa in English and psychology; he is also a graduate of the New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy. He has written a dozen crime-suspense novels, all set in New Mexico. Some of his works include Serpent Gate , The Judas Judge , Under the Color of Law , The Big Gamble, and Hard Country. He has recieved many nominations for his work, and in 2004, McGarrity received the New Mexico Governors Award for Excellence in Literature. He has also published a number of articles in professional journals on a variety of topics, including drug treatment interventions, program assessment and evaluations, and therapy programs for children. In addition to being a law enforcement officer, he has been an investigator and caseworker for the New Mexico Public Defenders Office and has taught at several colleges and universities. He has been instrumental in establishing a number of scholarships, including the Hillerman-McGarrity Creative Writing Scholarship at the University of New Mexico, the Richard Bradford Memorial Creative Writing Scholarship at Santa Fe Community College, and others. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico with his wife. --This text refers to the audioCD edition. From Publishers Weekly Returning from 2004's Slow Kill , stoic Sante Fe police chief Kevin Kerney receives an unexpected visit from Johnny Jordan, a childhood friend and now cantankerous former rodeo pro, who convinces Kerney to serve as a technical adviser in the shooting of a local western film. Eager for a break, Kerney heads to the location in southwestern Bootheel with his lovely wife, Army Lt. Col. Sara Brannon, and his young son, Patrick, in tow. But what starts out as a working vacation in this seventh Kerney outing quickly detours into a bloody crime scene when the body of an undercover Border Patrol agent is dumped onto Highway 81. In no time, U.S. Customs joins Kerney's investigation into a possible illegal immigrant and drug smuggling operation. Meanwhile, Sara's army job unexpectedly takes her to Ireland where she must track down and seize the notorious George Spalding, a gemstone smuggler and wartime deserter. McGarrity focuses on the details of the settings and on the characters' tactical maneuvers career- and parenting-wise. The result is slightly amplified sleuthing, deftly swapped out at surprising moments to the POV of the bad guys, and with fine but low-grade intensity. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Booklist The title of this latest in the Kevin Kerney series misses the point entirely. Yes, many cop novels, especially those veering toward noir, are about nothing but trouble, but McGarrity's series--at least since Kerney became Santa Fe chief of police and married career army officer Sarah--has been about all sorts of things besides trouble: domestic life in a long-distance marriage and the joys and frustrations of middle-age parenting, for example. McGarrity's remarkable eye for detail, always the hallmark of his series, remains so, whether the hero is choosing a day-care facility or working a stakeout. This time the action is split between Sarah tracking an army defector in Ireland--a story begun in Slow Kill (2004)--and Kerney serving as a consultant on a movie about rodeo competitors. There's plenty of trouble on both fronts, of course, but McGarrity never loses sight of the everyday, even in the heat of battle. Longtime fans of the series may yearn for some of the edginess of the early installments, but that's how it goes with life--either too much excitement or not enough. Bill Ott Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Read more
Features & Highlights
- Santa Fe Police Chief Kevin Kerney is back in the tenth and most entertaining novel in Michael McGarrity's acclaimed mystery series.
- After years away on the pro rodeo circuit, Johnny Jordan struts into Santa Fe to ask his boyhood friend, Santa Fe Police Chief Kevin Kerney, to serve as a technical advisor on a contemporary Western movie to be filmed along the Mexican border. Kerney agrees and plans a working vacation on location, in a remote area of the state known as the Bootheel, with his wife, Lt. Colonel Sara Brannon, and their three-year-old son, Patrick. But, a dead man on the road near an isolated border crossing, a federal undercover investigation into immigrant smuggling, the search for a fugitive from military justice hiding somewhere in Europe, and Johnny Jordan's troublesome behavior all ensure that nothing goes as planned. As separate investigations embroil them in circumstances that will forever change their lives, Kerney must care for Patrick while Sara plays a dangerous game of Pentagon politics. Packed with family secrets, international intrigue, and memorable characters, this is McGarrity's most ambitious and involving novel to date-- traveling an accelerating arc from Santa Fe to the desert grasslands and mountains of the Bootheel, to the most secret levels of the Pentagon, to a resort town on the coast of Ireland, and back to an adrenaline-charged climax on a desolate landing strip a few miles north of the Mexican border.
