County Sheriff's Detective, Clayton Istee, is the son of retired police chief, Kevin Kearney.

Called to investigate the murder of a man and woman at a local hotel, finds the victims have been scalped and their throats cut. When he starts looking into their backgrounds, he finds that the couple walked out of a casino with a whole lot of money months before they were murdered.

Why was this crime hidden by an undercover federal DEA agent? And why is now asking Istee for his help in seizing a Mexican drug lord, highly suspected of the murders?

Murder, drugs, revenge .... they are the focus of this crime fiction. The intricate plot includes many varied characters. For the followers of this series ... bad news! This is the final Kevin Kearney novel. Kearney only has a small cameo appearance in HEAD WOUNDS. While this was an okay read, the plot has been done many times by other authors .. so nothing really new here. I thought the final book in a long-standing series would be less convoluted and have more of Kevin Kearney.

Many thanks to the author / W W Norton & Company / Netgalley for the digital copy of this crime fiction. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

HEAD WOUNDS: A Kevin Kerney Novel
Michael McGarrity
W.W. Norton & Company
ISBN-13: 978- 1324002857
Hardcover
Contemporary Western/Crime Thriller

Michael McGarrity over the past quarter-century has crafted over a dozen gritty novels featuring Santa Fe Police Chief (and now retired) Kevin Kerney family in New Mexico. McGarrity, who also wrote an acclaimed trilogy concerning the Kerney family’s history in New Mexico from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, recently indicated that he was putting the finishing touches on the last installment in the Kerney series. That volume, titled HEAD WOUNDS, has now been published and it is full of surprises.

The biggest surprise in HEAD WOUNDS is that Kerney, who celebrates his seventieth birthday in the book, only makes sporadic appearances, with his first being about a third of the way into the proceedings. The focus is primarily upon Dona Ana sheriff’s detective Clayton Istee, who at the beginning of the book is brought in to investigate the murder of a couple at a Las Cruces motel. Istee, it develops, knows the couple, who had been in the area previously. Istee learns that the two had quickly exited Las Cruces for parts unknown after stealing a significant amount of money from a guest at a nearby casino. It is a puzzle for Istee that the pair had returned, but an even bigger mystery is the manner of their deaths, given that both of them were scalped and had their throats cut. Istee suspects that the murders might have been drug-related, but the trouble actually goes deeper than that. Istee’s investigation, which is aided by a veteran DEA agent, puts him on the trail of a shadowy assassin for hire known as El Jefe who has ties on both sides of the border. Istee subsequently becomes involved in a firefight, the outcome of which puts him and El Jefe into conflict. Meanwhile, other players on both sides of the law and the border become involved in the situation, so that what appeared to be a bizarre double-murder has far-reaching implications with the possibility of putting Istee’s family in danger. Istee is advised to stand down but just can’t do that, and unofficially joins forces with members of a couple of other law enforcement agencies to see that El Jefe is brought to justice. Kerney, who is Istee’s father as the result of a brief relationship, is occasionally asked for advice but in HEAD WOUNDS is more often than not relegated to the position of observer as the story --- and, apparently, the series --- winds down to a violent and satisfactory ending.

It might appear at first blush that the relatively sparse involvement of Kerney in HEAD WOUNDS is a somewhat odd way to end the series about him. It should be remembered, however, that Kerney finishes his seventieth decade in the book. It would have seemed odd to bring him out of retirement at that age and station when Istee, who has appeared in previous books in the series, is available to help wrap things up. HEAD WOUNDS has a somewhat meandering plot that runs through it but settles down about two-thirds of the way through, and, as always, McGarrity’s descriptions of the people and places on both sides of the southern border of the United States make for terrific reading to the extent that the journey through the tale is more than worth it, regardless of who is and isn’t featured prominently. It is a fitting end to a well-crafted series.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
© Copyright 2020, The Book Report, Inc. All rights reserved.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced digital copy of this book in exchange for a review.

I have long enjoyed the Kevin Kerney and Kerney family novels and now that Kevin's son Clayton Istee, has come to be the central character, I still enjoy them. Michael McGarrity has a way with words!! He can make you feel as though you are in the location right along with the characters.

Clayton had some problems when he fought to save his father from a bogus murder charge and has now taken a new job as a Sheriff's Detective in Dona Ana county. When two people are found murdered and scalped in a local motel, Clayton recognizes the victims as ones who fled the area a few years ago after stealing from the Indian casino where they worked. So why are they back? And why have they been murdered in such a distinctive way?

The answers are not easy to find, involving cross-border drug trafficking, hidden tunnels and corrupt Mexican officials. This is a good read and if it is the last Kevin Kerney novel, I will be sad.

I have loved the Michael McGarrity Kervin Kerney series. In fact, reading this series caused me to travel to Santa Fe and adopt it as my retirement home. I was filled with some trepidation because Headwounds is the last book in the series. Although I enjoyed it, I missed Kevin Kerney as the lead character. Clayton Istee is no Kevin Kerney. The book kept my interest with all the twists and turns as Clayton goes up against a Mexican drug cartel and the viciousness of the drug trade but I do wish that Kevin Kerney had a greater involvement in the story.

I had the honor and the pleasure several years ago to meet Michael McGarrity in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the Page One bookstore. I loved his Kevin Kerney series and wanted to let him know his books were very well liked in my home state of West Virginia and at my library. He was delightedly surprised that his book were even read "east of the Mississippi" as he put it and I assured him that we liked him so well his books were on standing order.

Alas, all good things must come to an end and so it seems that this series will ride off into the sunset with one last gallop left in the horse. Although Kevin Kerney is mentioned sporadically in this story, his son wears his father's mantle very well as he investigates drug related murders and discover a very adapt assassin of Native American heritage.

The book did drag in some places but the action all but made up for it and the ending left me wondering; is this the end?

A good read. I will miss you, Kevin Kerney. Enjoy your retirement.