Police

Kerney acquires a temporary Lieutenant's badge from an old cop friend, and he heads over to the White Sands Missile Range to try and track down his partner's son, who has supposedly gone AWOL. Kerney, the boy's godfather, doesn't believe he's gone AWOL for a moment. He receives only reluctant help from the military powers-that-be in the form of Captain Sara Brannon, who not only has a background check run on him, but has his room searched and every move he makes carefully watched. Of course any serious mystery reader will divine early on that Kerney and Sara are destined to be together (and indeed, in the latest installment, they are married and expecting a child), but this is well handled by McGarrity as he gets Sara in a very nasty place toward the end of the novel, making the reader end up by caring about her as much as you care about Kerney himself.

The story itself is delightfully complicated and takes the reader all over the military base as well as to Mexico, and involves some missing antiquities. I really minded the two deaths in the novel that are of consequence (one animal, one human) - I'm not counting bad-guy deaths - which for me ratcheted up my investment in the outcome of the story. This is a very solid beginning to what has turned out to be a steady selling and popular series - I'm glad I finally found out the reason why these books are so well liked, and I look forward to welcoming Michael McGarrity to Aunt Agatha's on October 5.