Retired Santa Fe police chief Kevin Kerney is horrified to learn that his horse-training partner, Riley Burke, has been murdered by an escaped prisoner, prompting Kerney to team up with his half-Apache son to hunt down the killer.

Before newly installed police chief Kevin Kerney can discover who murdered a U.S. ambassador's estranged wife, the FBI takes over the investigation, and soon witnesses vanish and the case is neatly solved, but Kerney is convinced that he is in the midst of an intelligence cover-up riddled with devious government agents and must race against time to uncover the truth. Reprint.

"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...