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.