Downfall by J. A. Jance
I was so happy to receive this Joanna Brady mystery for review. It’s been some time since I read
one, not for lack of desire, but for lack of time. “Downfall” is fully as good
as the last one I read.
It’s the last
day of August in the Mule Mountains of SE Arizona. Sheriff Brady, an already
busy county official, has a daughter heading to college for the first time, a
five-year-old starting kindergarten, and baby girl due in early December. And
now she gets word that her parents have been in a serious car wreck. Her
stepfather is dead and her mother is in the hospital, victims of a kid with a
rifle on the overpass. The kid soon crashed his 4x4 fleeing authorities and she
finds herself kneeling next to him, comforting her parents’ shooter as he dies.
Then she’s on to
the next crisis, two dead bodies at the base of a steep cliff called Geronimo
by some, Black Knob by others, but officially Gold Hill. It’s a place local
kids climbed as a rite of passage, situated in rugged terrain that has to be
hiked to, making the investigation of the unknown women even more complicated.
When Joanna’s
mother dies of her injuries, she mourns their relationship. It was never good,
but Joanna felt they were moving toward improvement and now will never get to
achieve that.
Who the
seemingly unrelated women were and why they are both dead in the same spot is
the basis for the mystery that Joanna must untangle against the backdrop of her
complicated family life.
A truly
satisfying read.
Reviewed by Kaye George, author of Death on the Trek, for Suspense Magazine
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