My grandma has been visiting for the last month and she reads a lot. I asked what she reads and she mentioned that these kinds of books are the main thing she reads and J.A. Jance is one of her favorite authors. I chose this series (of the two that Jance writes) to try because my grandma is from Arizona, so it seemed appropriate. Joanna Brady is a strong, focused, tough character who has to unravel the truth about her husband's death when he is accused of things she firmly believes he has nothing to do with and when his death is being investigated as a suicide. I thought the whole thing was fine, but I could go my whole life without reading any more of them. Maybe I'll read more just to talk to my grandma about, but it's just not particularly amazing. I didn't know who the most guilty party was, but Jance's red herring just never really took with me and I was pretty sure of who was involved (although I thought he was more guilty than he was).

I accidentally read a book much farther in this series and really liked it, so I decided to come back to the beginning. I enjoyed the story, and I know the series gets better as it moves along.

The story itself is exciting enough, but I really enjoyed the place where this all takes place: Southern Arizona. I decided to start at Jance's first book, so I look forward to reading more adventures of Joann Brady taking place in some of my favorite places on earth!

It is interesting that the Cochise County Sheriff was involved with some bad things, given that one died in a DUI a few years ago, and the influence of drug cartels is much larger today, so it will be interesting to see how Jance writes about that over time from when this book was first written over 30 years ago in 1993, before NAFTA, Operation Wetback, 9/11, before a lot of things...

Good to see how it all started. I hope ti read this series in order.

I enjoyed this book. It was probably what I would classify as an easy summer read. I will definitely read more of her books.

Life is good for Joanna Brady in the small desert community of Bisbee. She has Jenny, her adored nine-year-old daughter, and solid, honest, and loving husband, Andy, a local lawman who's running for Sheriff of Cochise County. But her good life explodes when a bullet destroys Andy Brady's future and leaves him dying beneath the blistering Arizona sun.

Slow start. I've started this book at least four times. But got distracted for one reason or another. I think it needed my undivided attention. Too much going on.

I didn't appreciate the Angie/Tony scenes. They didn't help the story in any way.
I gave this a listen, eager to discover a new audiobook series. Yet, I'm uncertain if I'll stick with it. The setup consumes nearly half the book, and Johanna seems passive, mainly yelling at those who presume her husband's suicide. I really didn't like Joanna. I found myself urging the story to dive into the investigation, and I found myself skimming. You can definitely tell it was written in the 90s. There were also some confusing parts- like when one character mentions something, and then Joanna says it- like it hadn't been said before. I had to back up the audio a couple of times to understand.


The narration by Hilary Huber was pretty good.

I came into this series late and loved it, so naturally I wanted to read it from the beginning.

The books was very good and has most of everything I love about a J.A. Jance book here, the plot is pretty solid, the characters are the best part of this book though as with all of these books. My single biggest complaint about this book is that this good plot and great characters are pulled along in some of the most convuluted ways imaginable and I groaned multiple times when characters worried about things that were not important and completely ignored obvious things. If these characters did not have bouts of blindness and stupidity the plot would have died instantly. You do expect this kind of thing in fiction of any kind or crime tv shows for that matter, they can't solve the case too quickly or fail to solve it at all, but in this book in particular it did feel very hamfisted.

All that being said, I loved this book and am looking forward to enjoying the series. Read this one for the characters and for the books to come it is well worth the time, and try to restrain yourself from wanting to reach into the book and strangle characters when they don't notice the obvious things you do or react in the way you think a reasonable person would.