Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Catching Up With Sheriff Joanna Bradey


I have just gotten book number 13 of the Sheriff Joanna Brady series by J. A. Jance - I am so excited. I have been waiting for this new book to come out. I realized a couple of weeks ago however that I had not read books number 11 or 12 in the series yet. So to start to "catch up", I have just finished reading number 11 - "Exit Wounds".
Now "catching up" with Joanna Brady is not easy to do. She is the Sheriff of Cochise County - an elected position. She is running for reelection and has scheduled appearances she has to make. On top of this, she is also a mother of a teenager involved in other interests. So Joanna finds herself in a position trying to balance her professional and personal life. To top it off, she learns she is pregnant and is having morning sickness.
A clash of her duties occurs when a woman turns up dead in a trailer along with 17 unlicensed dogs. The woman was shot so being sheriff it is obvious why this would be her concern. The county has made cutbacks and placed the Animal Control department under her as well making the death of these dogs her concern as well. So she has a murder to investigate as well as the operations of the Animal Control department.
To make things more complicated, she has to deal with problems at the jail when the air conditioner goes out right before the 4th of July. She deals with this and everything is going well until one of the inmates turns up dead. Now she has to deal with whether this death was a result of the breakdown in procedure or not.
Oh ... and this is not all. There is an accident involving a van loaded with illegal aliens in her county. All the passengers died and only the smuggler's driver survives. Joanna is determined to do what she can to see that the smugglers are brought to justice.
Joanna deals with all of these professional duties in a manner that impresses some her colleagues. There are more twists and turns in this book than I will mention. But hey..., the book was definitely worth reading and you need to read it to see for your self. One book down and two more to in order to "catch up".

1 comment:

JenningsJunk said...

Wow - this sounds action packed. Definitely looks like a great read. Onto my list to read it goes.