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Synopsis
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 a 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 ensure that nothing goes as planned.
As separate investigations embroil Kerney and Sara in circumstances that will forever changes 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, the most secret levels of the Pentagon, 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.
Reviews
In his ninth (Everyone Dies, 2003, etc.), Santa Fe Police Chief Kevin Kerney meets an old friend, cracks a tough case and goes to the movies. Fast-talking, hard-drinking, skirt-chasing Johnny Jordan is less a friend than a case of nostalgia gone sour. When he and Kevin Kerney were kids growing up together on Joe and Bessie Jordan's ranch, Kerney had learned to step warily around Johnny. Now Johnny's producing a movie, a modern western to be filmed in the nearby Playas. How would Kerney like being technical advisor on the cop stuff and pick up some expense money for his wife and young son? It sounds like a great way to spend the free time he and Sara have coming, Kerney thinks. And he'd be right if the pace of events didn't make its usual mockery out of Kerney family planning. Suddenly, Lieutenant Colonel Sara finds herself detached from the Pentagon and on her way to Dublin in the wake of an international smuggler with military connections. And suddenly Kerney has the murder of a Border Patrol agent on his hands, along with all the trouble Johnny Jordan can stir up as easily on a movie set as he had on the old homestead. Although the hero vanishes for nearly a hundred pages, the series remains one of crime fiction's most readable. Copyright © Kirkus
Out of the blue Johnny Jordan asks his old friend Santa Fe Chief of Police Kevin Kerney to be a technical advisor for a movie that is being partially shot on his family’s ranch. Kerney thinks it will be fun but on his way to the ranch headquarters of the Granite Pass Cattle Company, he finds the body of a young man who has just died. He later is approached by the FBI who tells him that the dead man was an agent working undercover to break up a network of smugglers transporting illegals over the border. Kerney is asked to keep an eye out on the doings of the ranch and report to another undercover contact. Not satisfied with the way the investigation is being handled, Kerney does some sleuthing on his own. --- His wife, a colonel in the US Army attached to the Pentagon, goes outside the chain of command and asks her boss’s superior to let her go to Ireland where a Vietnam deserter and smuggler is relocating under an assumed name. This is a hot potato because in addition to her quarry, she works to bring in a smuggler with close ties to the presidential administration. The choices she makes changes the dynamics of the Kerney family. --- This is one of the best books in the Kevin Kerney series because readers have a balanced view of the protagonists’ marriage as they struggle to survive a long distance commuter relationship with the wife sent to various hot spots in the world. Fans who like to get behind the scene and learn how a movie is made will like NOTHING BUT TROUBLE, a police procedural filled with action, intrigue and a touch of romance. The mystery is well thought out with unexpected twists and turns. Michael McGarrity writes his usual realistic and entertaining crime thriller. Copyright © Harriet Klausner
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 © From Publishers Weekly, Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved
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