Nothing but Trouble Michael McGarrity

Nothing but Trouble

Michael McGarrity

Dutton, Jan 2006, $24.95, 336 pp.

ISBN 052594916X

Out of the blue Johnny Jordan asks his old friend Santa Fe Chief of Police Kevin Kerney to be a technical advisor for a movie that is being partially shot on his family's ranch. Kerney thinks it will be fun but on his way to the ranch headquarters of the Granite Pass Cattle Company, he finds the body of a young man who has just died. He later is approached by the FBI who tells him that the dead man was an agent working undercover to break up a network of smugglers transporting illegals over the border. Kerney is asked to keep an eye out on the doings of the ranch and report to another undercover contact. Not satisfied with the way the investigation is being handled, Kerney does some sleuthing on his own.

His wife, a colonel in the US Army attached to the Pentagon, goes outside the chain of command and asks her boss's superior to let her go to Ireland where a Vietnam deserter and smuggler is relocating under an assumed name. This is a hot potato because in addition to her quarry, she works to bring in a smuggler with close ties to the presidential administration. The choices she makes changes the dynamics of the Kerney family.

This is one of the best books in the Kevin Kerney series because readers have a balanced view of the protagonists' marriage as they struggle to survive a long distance commuter relationship with the wife sent to various hot spots in the world. Fans who like to get behind the scene and learn how a movie is made will like NOTHING BUT TROUBLE, a police procedural filled with action, intrigue and a touch of romance. The mystery is well thought out with unexpected twists and turns. Michael McGarrity writes his usual realistic and entertaining crime thriller.

Harriet Klausner