Kerney Always Gets His Man, Either Dead or Alive
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Author: Michael McGarrity
Title: Dead or Alive Genre: mystery Some clerk at the Bernalillo County jail in Albuquerque made a mistake, and in the process unleashed unholy hell on northeastern New Mexico. It seemed innocent enough: just some confusion between two inmates named Craig Larson, but when the wrong Craig Larson walked out of that jail headed a couple hundred miles up I-25, his departure set in motion a killing spree unlike anything ever seen in the Land of Enchantment. Craig Larson made his first mistake when he shot Riley Burke in Kevin Kerney's driveway. Within hours, Kerney was on his way home from a temporary billet in London, with a little touch of bloodlust on his mind. Larson continued on his merry way, however, kidnapping, killing, raping or robbing everyone he met; often "doubling up" (especially the women). With Kerney and his son Clayton Istee hot on Larson's trail, it would be just a matter of time before the big showdown. By the time the father and son had partnered up, though, Larson had decided that his legacy would be to become the best cop-killer outlaw in history: would he put another notch or two in his gun at the expense of Kerney and son? or would Craig Larson become just one more killer in Kevin Kerney's dead file? As far as Kerney and Istee were concerned, Larson was coming in, Dead or Alive. The twelfth Kevin Kerney police procedural from the word-processor of New Mexican Michael McGarrity, Dead or Alive is more or less a travelogue of eastern and northeastern New Mexico. Larson expends most of his raping and killing energy up near Raton in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, with a brief detour south to Lincoln County (necessary to personally involve Istee, who is a Lincoln County Deputy). Unlike others of McGarrity's novels, all of which (except Slow Kill) take place in New Mexico, the high desert landscape is poorly described; a pity since the empty country can sometimes become something like an additional character in McGarrity's prose. While Kerney novels (Under the Color of Law, Nothing but Trouble) are almost always more suspense thriller than mystery, Dead or Alive is less suspenseful than most. The character of Craig Larson is sketched in broad stereotypes, right down to the innocent, slightly slow twin brother (making the villain the evil twin: groan....) There's no rhyme or reason to his sudden escalation from a careful embezzler to a spree killer who wants to me the next Malvo and Mohammed; no moment of evil epiphany. He just starts killing people and finds out "he likes it." McGarrity works hard to make Craig Larson completely detestable - too hard. He becomes a caricature of evil, so unbelievable as to detract from the story. The suspense angle fails as well, with McGarrity yanking the heroes willy-nilly out of the action not once but twice as the showdown approaches: the sudden lulls in the action immediately kill any momentum the heroes had been able to build up. Worst of all is the final showdown; a bit of vigilante justice that pretty much destroys Kerney as a true hero. Dead or Alive is by far the weakest book in the series, and even Kerney fans should probably give it a pass. I'm sorry I didn't. all content copyright © 2014 by scmrak
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