"Detective Clayton Istee investigates New Mexico borderland killings by an elusive Mexican assassin with ties to a drug cartel. In Michael McGarrity's final, propulsive Kevin Kerney novel, the nightmare of the Mexican drug wars spills across the border with the discovery of a couple in a Las Cruces hotel, scalped with their throats cut. Because of the unusual MO, Detective Clayton Istee suspects that the murders are drug related, but a lack of evidence...

Santa Fe Police Chief Kevin Kerney is serving as a technical advisor for a contemporary Western being filmed along the Mexican border. When a dead man is found on a road near a border crossing, what started as a working vacation turns into a series of investigations that lead to dangerous Pentagon politics and to travels as far as a resort town in Ireland.

A corpse turns up in rural New Mexico, and leads the local police chief through a world of gambling, sex, and hedonism as practiced by wealthy VIPs. Pursuing the case, he works with a deputy sheriff, undeterred by the fact that the deputy is his estranged son.

When Kevin Kerney receives an unexpected windfall -- 6,400 acres of high-country land outside Las Vegas, New Mexico -- the last thing he wants to think about is police work. But while visiting his new property, he comes upon an ailing stray dog that leads him to the butchered bones of a murder victim near the rugged mesa of Hermit's Peak. He has inherited a homicide along with a ranch.

Santa Fe Police Chief Kevin Kerney and his wife, Lieutenant Colonel Sara Brannon, are on leave and eagerly awaiting the birth of their son when a prominent gay attorney is gunned down outside his office by an unknown assailant. Called to the crime scene and faced with scanty evidence and no apparent motive, Kerney directs his chief of detectives to delve into the victim's personal and professional life, a decision that ultimately leads to a SWAT team...