Kevin Kerney, Santa Fe chief of police, solves yet another mystery in the latest entry in McGarrity's entertaining series (following Under Color of Law). As McGarrity's fans have come to expect, an intriguing set of circumstances leads Kerney and a well-realized cast of secondary characters around New Mexico until the bad guys are caught and justice is served. Clayton, Kerney's adult half-Apache son and a recent addition to the series, provides a new depth to the plot. Although they have only recently met, Clayton, also a police officer, has conflicted feelings about his almost-legendary law-enforcement father. When they must work together to solve the murders of a homeless Vietnam veteran and a woman who had disappeared from Santa Fe ten years earlier, tensions between them add nicely to the complexity of the story. Compared with the other titles in the series, this entry is a bit flat, with less of the magic of New Mexico in evidence, but fans will not be disappointed as McGarrity further develops his continuing characters into possibly the most well rounded in any current mystery series. Ann Forister, Roseville P.L., CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Smooth writing, well-drawn characters and several neat plot twists distinguish the seventh Kevin Kerney novel from Anthony Award-nominee and former deputy sheriff McGarrity (Tularosa). Never losing sight of his people in the forensic detail, the author skillfully makes us want to know what happens next without unnecessary violence or contrivance. When two murder victims turn up after a fire in an abandoned fruit stand on a rural highway, Kerney, now the police chief of Sante Fe, N.Mex., takes a personal interest in the case. One blackened corpse is a John Doe, stabbed three times, who is soon identified as a homeless Vietnam vet. The other remains belong to a 29- year-old college student, Anna Marie Montoya, who disappeared 11 years before. As it happens, Kerney was involved in the search for the missing Anna Marie. Investigating the John Doe is Kerney's estranged son, Clayton Istee, now a deputy sheriff for the Lincoln County (N.Mex.) police, whose mother was a full-blooded Mescalero Apache. Clayton, a sympathetic character struggling to support a wife and two small kids, eventually finds himself in charge of a task force looking into a much more complex crime. Kerney would like to effect a reconciliation between himself and his son, but the process proves awkward for them both. McGarrity keeps the parallel plots moving nicely along toward a rational solution. This is an exceptionally intelligent, humane mystery in a series that deserves a wide readership. (On sale July 8) Forecast: McGarrity has been compared by the L.A. Times to James Lee Burke, doing for New Mexico what Burke has done for Louisiana. McGarrity, however, is unlikely to reach Burke's sales heights, unless his books go in for more blood and guts. Blurbs from Jonathan Kellerman and Tony Hillerman will help keep sales healthy. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

A blown-out knee isn't the only source of pain for Santa Fe Police Chief Kevin Kerney as he embarks on his seventh satisfying adventure. There's the strain of his long-distance marriage to Lt. Col. Sara Brannon, very much the career officer, very much preoccupied with her grueling Command and General Staff course at Fort Leavenworth, very much pregnant with Kerney's child--a new sibling for Clayton Istee, whose existence Kerney has learned of only recently. Istee, late of the Mescaslero (Apache) Tribal Police and now a deputy sheriff in Lincoln County, New Mexico, happens to be the dad of two, making Kerney an instant grandfather. But Kerney finds familial comfort in painfully short supply. From Sara, he gets periodic disbursements of anger hot enough to burn up telephone wires; from Istee, icy resentment that seems impenetrable. Though both criticize Kerney's behavior towards them, neither is specific enough to be helpful. Meanwhile, Kerney has to contend with the dead body of Anna Marie Montoya. After vanishing without a trace 11 years ago, she's been suddenly disinterred by Deputy Istee. Last time around, the case was Kerney's, among his most frustrating because his most manful efforts produced no results. Will Deputy Istee succeed where Sheriff Kerney failed? Does he ever hope so--and so, in a way, does Kerney. As deft, tidy, and character-driven as its six predecessors (Under the Color of Law, 2001, etc.). No one does the small-city police procedural more authoritatively than McGarrity. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Santa Fe police chief Kevin Kerney is a capable administrator, but he yearns for investigative action. He finds it when a fire in southern New Mexico turns up a dead body from a decades-old missing-person case on which Kerney had been the lead detective. Picking up a cold trail proves challenging enough on its own, but matters are complicated when Kerney's contact with the local police turns out to be his estranged son. In this seventh episode in the popular series, McGarrity again mixes his hero's work and personal lives superbly, capturing that unavoidable push and pull that so defines our daily routines. A former deputy sheriff for Santa Fe County, McGarrity brings remarkable verisimilitude to his re-creation of police procedures. In fact, this series has come to have an almost-documentary feel to it, something like the television series Cops. Longtime fans may miss a certain grandeur present in the earlier episodes, in which McGarrity made more use of the New Mexico landscape and the mythology of the West, but if Kerney's mythic stew seems a bit underspiced lately, that is not to say that his ingredients aren't as fresh and carefully prepared as ever. --Bill Ott