Head Wounds

Bestseller McGarrity’s exceptional 14th Kevin Kerney novel (after 2018’s Residue) focuses on the retired police chief’s son, Clayton Istee, a sheriff’s detective in Doña Ana County, N.Mex. Clayton, who’s dispatched to a hotel where someone scalped a man and woman after slitting their throats, recognizes the victims as Lucy Nautzile, a mother of two he’d known for all of her life, and her companion, James Goggin. Two years earlier, the pair went on the run after embezzling $200,000 from a casino on a Native American reservation. Clayton learns that the money was actually stolen from a casino patron, making revenge for the theft a probable motive. The plot thickens when an undercover DEA agent meets Clayton and reveals that the m.o. of the killings matches that of a Mexican freelance assassin known as El Jefe. Superior prose (“the spires of the Organ Mountains tinged gold from the sun low on the western horizon”), expert plotting, and believable characters make this a standout. Fans of gritty crime novels will be rewarded. (Nov.)