D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
April
2008
Mystery Writer Michael McGarrity
Page: 2"Born on a ranch in the Tularosa Basin in south central New Mexico, Kerney has long dreamt of returning to his roots, which was taken away from his parents when the military expanded White Sands Missile Range, a high-security weapons testing facility."
McGarrity picks up from there: "Kerney does have a history that includes a sense of loss. We've all lost something or somebody or something of ourselves. He has lost this place, and is searching to find a way to possibly return."
McGarrity was already familiar with the troubled history of the missile range and ranchers whose land was appropriated, and put Kerney into that picture — literally, toting a gun in a showdown with authorities — as part of the character's backstory. "I knew the area very well from having spent time there in the 1950s and 1960s," he adds, "and I was stationed at White Sands awhile when I was in the service."
The events in Tularosa do bring Kerney back to his family's former ranch — though, of course, being a murder mystery, it's not exactly a happy homecoming.
"Part of what I wanted to try to write about was the viable ranching tradition that still exists in New Mexico, that people in urban centers rarely see," says McGarrity. "Kerney bridges two worlds — that of the rancher-cowboy and that of the modern policeman. Being a modern policeman in New Mexico, his cases emphasize the differences between rural or small communities and the big-city, urban crime stories that are so frequently written about. Western and rural police work is significantly different than what you see in crime shows."
McGarrity set his next book, Mexican Hat in the Gila about the time Catron County was making headlines for a law requiring citizens to bear arms, he recalls. "So I had that vision in my mind." He already knew this area, too, but says, "I always do fresh research. I took my camera and my four-wheel-drive and went to get the scene in my head, to capture it and bring it home."
He confesses that the image of Silver City in the book, though not necessarily unflattering, "is not always what the Chamber of Commerce wants to put out as an image of the city."
Emphasizing the importance of place to McGarrity's novel, each includes a map crafted by his son, Sean Eli. Subsequent books have been set in Mountainair, the Las Vegas valley, Alamogordo, Ruidoso, Lincoln County, Socorro, the Jornada del Muerto, Taos, Galisteo and of course Santa Fe. Nothing But Trouble, published in 2006, takes Kerney back to the Southwest corner of the state on a working vacation as a technical advisor on a contemporary Western movie being shot in the Bootheel — where, naturally, there's a murder. McGarrity's Web site includes background information on each locale and links to learn more (including, yes, a link to the Silver City-Grant County Chamber of Commerce).
The most recent Kerney mystery, Death Song, reunites the character — now police chief in Santa Fe — with his Mescalero Apache son, Clayton Istee. Fans might wonder whether, since Kerney is set to retire as the novel opens, McGarrity plans to turn the spotlight of his mysteries over to the character of Clayton — who also happens to be a police sergeant. Though he describes the introduction of the half-Apache character as "brilliant on my part," McGarrity isn't spilling any beans about his next book, which is half-written and due to his publisher at the end of June.
He has no interest in launching a second mysteries series, unconnected to the Kerney books, however. If McGarrity ever gets around to writing something different, he says it will probably be a stand-alone book, not necessarily a mystery.
In the meantime, he still has a lot of the state of New Mexico to explore in his novels — all that geography not claimed by his friend Tony Hillerman.
The Friends of the Library's 2nd Annual Literacy Alive Day, on the theme of "Writing New Mexico, Geography, Culture and History," will be Saturday, April 5, from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. at the Silco Theater on Bullard Street in downtown Silver City. Schedule: 9:15 a.m. student awards ceremony; 10:15 a.m. keynote address by Michael McGarrity; 1 p.m. panel discussion with McGarrity, Linda Jacobs, Mary Lynn, Jack Warner; 2:15 p.m. talk by Linda Jacobs; 3 p.m. book signing. Tickets, available at the door, at the Public Library, or from Friends of the Library, Box 5098, Silver City, NM 88062, are $8, $6 FOL members, $6 students/seniors, 12 and under free. A free Literacy Alive Day Children's Program will be held 10:30 a.m.-1 p.m. at the Public Library, featuring books by New Mexico author Rudolfo Anaya. For more information, call 538-3672.