In a remote New Mexico campground, six people are killed in an apparently senseless murder spree. Deputy State Police Chief Kevin Kerney suspects the slaying wasn’t random at all—but rather a calculated plot to eliminate one high-profile victim, retired judge, Vernon Langsford. In piecing together the judge’s shocking past, Kerney discovers the victim’s predilection for sexual indiscretions, a history of family betrayal and greed, and a dark marriage that ended mysteriously and violently. But as Kerney gets closer to the heart of a terrible crime, it’s a woman from his own past who emerges with a stunning secret of her own.

In a remote New Mexico campground, six people are killed in an apparently senseless murder spree. Deputy State Police Chief Kevin Kerney suspects the slaying wasn’t random at all—but rather a calculated plot to eliminate one high-profile victim, retired judge, Vernon Langsford. In piecing together the judge’s shocking past, Kerney discovers the victim’s predilection for sexual indiscretions, a history of family betrayal and greed, and a dark marriage that ended mysteriously and violently. But as Kerney gets closer to the heart of a terrible crime, it’s a woman from his own past who emerges with a stunning secret of her own.

Kevin Kerney investigates the apparent murder of an unidentified woman whose bones he had found on a ranch he had just inherited.

After receiving a call from the newly appointed chief of the New Mexico State Police, ex-Santa Fe chief of detectives Kevin Kerney is thrown into an investigation of a small-town cop-killing no one has been able to solve. His only lead: a homeless schizophrenic's ramblings about rape and an uncharted place called Serpent Gate. Meanwhile, back in Santa Fe, priceless art is stolen from the governor's offices and a beautiful young blonde is murdered in a millionaire's mansion. Kerney follows a trail of clues to Mexico, where he faces off against an old nemesis with powerful government connections. Unwilling to back down, Kerney must use all of his tenacity, raw courage, and knowledge of the criminal mind in a bloody showdown that may cost him his life.

Set in a time-bending, seriocomically imagined world between Heaven and Hell, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is a philosophical meditation on the conflict between divine mercy and human free will that takes a close look at the eternal damnation of the Bible's most notorious sinner.--[book cover].

With "a cunning mind for crime fiction" (New York Times Book Review), Anthony Award-nominated Michael McGarrity ratchets up the stakes in his novel of a vengeful killer with an unspeakable agenda: offing people with ties to the criminal justice system. Next on the list: Santa Fe Police Chief Kevin Kerney, his wife, Lieutenant Colonel Sara Brannon, and their unborn son.

Santa Fe Police Chief Kevin Kerney travels to a California ranch looking to buy some prime quarter horse breeding stock. Instead, he finds himself the prime suspect in a possible homicide when the ranch owner, Clifford Spalding, is found dead. Confronted by a determined cop unwilling to let him off the hook, Kerney decides to conduct his own investigation. As he digs into the victim's background, he learns that Spalding's ex-wife refuses to believe that her son, a soldier killed in Vietnam some thirty years ago, is dead. Kerney digs deeper and soon finds himself sharing the woman's doubts: Did Spalding's current wife, a much younger woman, orchestrate his murder with the help of a lover? Did a California cop collude with Spalding to keep his ex-wife from learning the truth about her son? Slow Kill races from West Coast to East Coast, as Kerney tries to extricate himself from a situation that could ruin his career by finding the answers to a thirty-year-old mystery.

The latest comic novel from Christopher Buckley, in which a hapless Englishman embarks on a dangerous mission to the New World in pursuit of two judges who helped murder a king. London, 1664. Twenty years after the English revolution, the monarchy has been restored and Charles II sits on the throne. The men who conspired to kill his father are either dead or disappeared. Baltasar “Balty” St. Michel is twenty-four and has no skills and no employment. He gets by on handouts from his brother-in-law Samuel Pepys, an officer in the king’s navy. Fed up with his needy relative, Pepys offers Balty a job in the New World. He is to track down two missing judges who were responsible for the execution of the last king, Charles I. When Balty’s ship arrives in Boston, he finds a strange country filled with fundamentalist Puritans, saintly Quakers, warring tribes of Indians, and rogues of every stripe. Helped by a man named Huncks, an agent of the Crown with a mysterious past, Balty travels colonial America in search of the missing judges. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Samuel Pepys prepares for a war with the Dutch that fears England has no chance of winning. Christopher Buckley’s enchanting new novel spins adventure, comedy, political intrigue, and romance against a historical backdrop with real-life characters like Charles II, John Winthrop, and Peter Stuyvesant. Buckley’s wit is as sharp as ever as he takes readers to seventeenth-century London and New England. We visit the bawdy court of Charles II, Boston under the strict Puritan rule, and New Amsterdam back when Manhattan was a half-wild outpost on the edge of an unmapped continent. The Judge Hunter is a smart and swiftly plotted novel that transports readers to a new world.