Clinton McKinzie Books in Order

If you want the full published run: The Edge of Justice / Get the Edge → Point of Law / Get the Point → Trial by Ice and Fire → Crossing the Line → Badwater
If you want the strongest Burns family drama: Point of Law / Get the Point → Crossing the Line → Badwater
If you want Wyoming climbing suspense: The Edge of Justice / Get the Edge → Trial by Ice and Fire → Badwater
If you just want one solid entry point: The Edge of Justice / Get the Edge

Clinton McKinzie was born in Los Angeles and raised in Santa Monica, California. Long before he published a novel, he was pulled toward stories about danger, wild places, and people making hard choices under pressure. That mix ended up shaping the crime fiction he became known for.

His path to writing was not especially tidy. He attended Santa Monica College, earned a bachelor's degree from Millsaps College, and later received his law degree from the University of Wyoming. Along the way he worked a range of jobs and gathered the kind of small, practical details that tend to stick in a novelist's mind, including time spent working as a bouncer while getting established in Wyoming.

Wyoming stayed with him.

So did climbing. McKinzie became deeply committed to rock and alpine climbing, and that love of steep places shows up all through his fiction. After law school he worked as a peace officer and then as a deputy district attorney in Denver, which gave him a close view of investigations, courtroom strain, and the very human gap between what the law says and what people actually do.

He has said that he collects characters and stories, and that feels like a fair description of how his books work. The legal side comes from lived experience. The climbing does too. When he started writing, he leaned into the oldest advice in the business, write what you know, and in his case that meant crime, prosecution, mountain risk, and the people drawn to all three.

The turning point came in early 2000, when he was worn down by the pace of prosecution work and decided to take a leave of absence to try a novel. By his own account, even he was not sure it would work. He spent about six months writing the manuscript that became The Edge of Justice, his debut and the first published Antonio Burns novel.

That pairing, law and climbing, stuck.

McKinzie followed with Point of Law, Trial by Ice and Fire, Crossing the Line, and Badwater. Readers who connect with these books usually like the same things, the rough Wyoming and Colorado settings, the mix of investigation and physical danger, and the tense family bond between Antonio Burns and his brother Roberto. The books move fast, but they are not just about chases and shootouts. They also spend time on guilt, loyalty, love, and the damage caused by one bad decision.

His fiction keeps circling a few big questions. What does justice look like when the official version of events feels wrong. How far can a decent person bend the rules before he stops being decent. Why do some people keep walking toward danger, on a cliff face, in a courtroom, or in a case they should probably leave alone.

McKinzie has long been based in Colorado, and the law has remained part of his working life there. Climbing has stayed close too. That helps explain why his thrillers feel so physical and so grounded. Even at their most dramatic, they come from a writer who has spent real time in both worlds.