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Is there a spree killer on the loose? It sure looks like it when six people are killed in a short period of time at various campgrounds in New Mexico. Kevin Kerney, deputy chief of police, isn't so sure that this is the case, however, since the murderer varied the pattern in the last killing by using a silencer and shooting the victim twice. Perhaps the other killings were really a cover-up for the real target, former judge Vernon Langsford, which was a premeditated murder. This seems likely because it wasn't an easy kill. Or is it part of an even more insidious conspiracy dating back to the hit-and-run killing of Langsford's eldest son nine years earlier and the letter bombing death of his wife four years ago? Is someone systematically trying to wipe out the Langsfords or are all these incidents unrelated? McGarrity excels at showing what life in a typical police department is like. The officers don't have the luxury of concentrating on one case to the exclusion of all others. Even as they hunker down on the spree killer investigation, other crimes are committed. There's evidence that one of the police detectives has gone dirty The investigation of this affair ends in a most unfortunate way. As it turns out, Randy Shockley has been selling illegal weapons, forcing women about to be arrested for DWI to have sex which he videotaped and running a stolen car ring. A real upstanding citizen. Kerney has been considering retirement, and this last incident is the straw that breaks the camel's back. Kerney is a rich man as the result of an inheritance he received from his surrogate mother, and he's interested in finding some ranch land and getting back to the earth. He promises to give the force 30 more days until the spree killer is caught, but those 30 days are more grueling than anything he's ever undergone in his career. It doesn't help that his new wife, Sara Brannon, is off at a military officer's school and that they rarely see each other. Somehow they have to come up with a way to be together more frequently. To add to everything else, Kevin finds that an Apache woman that he dated in college had his son and never told him about it. Kevin and his son first meet when Clayton Istee tickets him for trespassing on Apache land. Clayton is very wary of Kerney, feeling that there is racism where none exists. In the course of one day, Kerney becomes a father and discovers he is a grandfather to two little ones as well. It's a lot to digest. This series has moved over the course of 5 books from being a character study of Kevin Kerney in a wild New Mexico setting to a straightforward police procedural in a more civilized area. I, for one, miss the wilder setting of the earlier books. Kerney is a dogged investigator, but I felt that he was badgering the few suspects that he had by interrogating them over and over again. This slowed down the story for me, as he kept returning to the same possible villains. Even though there were a lot of plot threads, I found that parts of the book were slow moving and that the perpetrator was predictable. As the book concludes, Kerney is facing a multitude of life changes. It will be interesting to see what direction McGarrity takes with the future books in this series. And there better be future books, because the Kerney canon is one that I enjoy very much although I found this particular book to be less satisfying than some of the others in the series. Note: This review refers to an out of print edition of the book (hardcover)
Reviewed by Maddy Van Hertbruggen, June 2003
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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