A woman is lying dead in the stillness of an airless trailer. Why someone would murder the homeless loner is only one of the questions nagging at the police. Why did the killer use an 85-year-old bullet, fired from the gun used in the brutal murder of two other women? The slayings are as oppressive as the 100 degree heat for Sheriff Joanna Brady in Cochise County, Arizona. She must put marital distractions and an opponent's dirty tricks aside to deal with the case that threatens everyone in her jurisdiction. Now there is a serial killer in their midst.
A missing teenager and an octogenarian found dead of apparently natural causes are pretty run-of-the-mill cases in Bisbee, Arizona, where Sheriff Joanna Brady is focusing on the last-minute details of her upcoming wedding. In this latest outing in Judith Jance's Brady series, the connection between the two events is a thin one. In the author's capable hands, however, it's enough to drive this well-plotted mystery to a credible conclusion.
J.A. Jance's Joanna Brady series whisks us off to a small town in the desert terrain of the Southwest. When Joanna's newly elected husband is killed while serving as sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona, Joanna steps into his position. We watch her grow into the job in Jance's series: she has to cope with the problems of juggling family and personal life while solving crimes. At the same time, we've learned about the benefits and shortcomings of daily life in a desert--how beautiful and dangerous the landscape can be in all seasons.
When Clyde Philips, a local gun dealer, dies violently, his stock of high-powered assault weapons vanishes, and two sniper slayings follow soon after, suspicion falls upon Alton Hosfield, an embittered rancher at odds with the federal government, the environmentalists, and anyone else he sees as a threat to his isolation. Sheriff Brady, however, suspects that the solution may lie elsewhere, and her investigation takes her into the bizarre practices of a local resort whose appeal is equal parts New Age spiritualism, Native American pantheism, and cold-blooded materialism.
Sheriff Joanna Brady of Cochise County, Arizona, finds herself in the midst of danger and deception when she attempts to exact revenge for the murder of her police officer husband.
