Head Wounds: A Kevin Kerney Novel

by Michael McGarrity

Overview

Clayton Istee, son of retired police chief Kevin Kerney, goes up against an elusive Mexican hitman in a mesmerizing story of murder, revenge, and redemption.

Given a chance to salvage his law enforcement career, Doña Ana County Sheriff’s Detective Clayton Istee catches a bizarre late-night double homicide at a Las Cruces hotel. Both victims, a man and a woman, have been scalped with their throats cut.

The murders show all the signs of a signature hit, but national and state crime databases reveal no similar profiles. Digging into the victims’ backgrounds, Clayton discovers that six months prior the couple had walked out of a nearby casino with $200,000 of a high-stakes gambler’s money.

He also learns the crime had been hushed up by an undercover federal DEA agent, who resurfaces and recruits Clayton for a dangerous mission to seize the Mexican drug lord responsible for the killings.

Thrust into the nightmare world of borderland drug wars and corrupt cops, Clayton duels with a cunning assassin poised to kill him and his family in a ferocious climax to the Kevin Kerney series that is sure to stun.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393868425
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	11/09/2021
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Michael McGarrity is the author of the nationally best-selling Kevin Kerney crime novels, which he concluded in Head Wounds, the acclaimed American West trilogy, and his recent novel, The Long Ago. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Editorial Reviews

"McGarrity knows his territory, so his plots always feel regionally grounded, accounting for scenes like the Apache ceremony that guides the dead 'from the Shadow World of human beings to the Real World beyond, the Land of Ever Summer.' Sheer poetry."

Marilyn Stasio

"Michael McGarrity is a master, and his latest mind-blower does not disappoint. I always rush to his work, then wait anxiously for another."

Luis Alberto Urrea

"A shattering conclusion to a much-praised series. Starts with a shocker. Ends with a stunner. The strength of the characters matches the power of the action scenes."

David Morrell

"Masterful. McGarrity hones a tale sharper than a villain’s scalping knife while bringing the Southwest setting to life with every stroke."

Dwight Holing

2020-09-08
Retired Santa Fe police chief Kevin Kerney gets only a minor role in his 14th appearance. Considering what the leading characters are up to, that’s a lucky break for him.

It all begins at a motel where James Goggin and Lucy Nautzile have been scalped after their throats were surgically cut, presumably by Estavio Trevino, a professional assassin who prefers to be called El Jefe. As if the carnage isn’t disturbing enough, John Cosgrove, the night clerk who reports discovering the bodies to Kerney’s son, Deputy Clayton Istee, of the Doña Ana County Sheriff’s Office, vanishes and promptly turns up with his own throat cut. It’s the beginning of a pattern that plays out all over the tribal lands of New Mexico and environs: First characters are introduced by name, placed in a thickly imagined web of relatives, and given a backstory, then they’re violently dispatched. Ever since stealing $200,000 from a tribal casino, the first two victims had been on the run—not from the law, to whom the theft was never reported, but from a mélange of gangsters, hirelings, informants, and paid killers who now all come rushing into Clayton’s ken. Soon after agreeing to join undercover DEA agent Bernard Harjo in a journey to El Jefe, an encounter the all-knowing killer plans to end by ransoming his visitors, Clayton shoots El Jefe’s adopted son, Fernando Olguin, in self-defense, putting himself squarely in the assassin’s crosshairs, where he’s got plenty of company. Gang leaders fight rival gang leaders, dirty cops go up against even dirtier cops, and it all ends with the 70th birthday party of Kevin Kerney. Remember him?

Underneath all the chaotic plotting and crossplotting, McGarrity’s New Mexico seethes with life.

Kirkus Reviews