The plan had been to win
the election and then start maternity leave about three weeks later as Butch
would be back from his short but intense book tour then. That had been the plan
for Sheriff Joanna Brady. But, whether it happened due to the stress of
election night, the campaign, recent events, or a million other things, Eleanor
Sage decided to arrive much earlier. In fact, she decided to make her appearance
early on election night before all the votes were tallied. Winning the election
was grand and all that, but having a healthy baby was far more important.
At nearly the same time and
unknown to all, a young teenager and his friends recently found a human skull. One
that is later found by the teen’s mother, June Carver, when she was cleaning out
her son’s closet so that it could be painted. With Sheriff Brady out on her
maternity leave, June Carver and her son, Jack Carver, come in to see Acting Sheriff
Tom Haddock about the skull. There is no doubt that the skull is human and it appears
to one and all that a bullet was fired through it at some point. That is not
all Jack Carver and his friends saw in the desert out in the San Bernardino
Valley.
It is a very good thing the killer did not see them.
One thing leads to another, and soon a multi-jurisdictional
investigation is underway with Sheriff Brady supervising and Acting Sheriff Tom
Haddock supervising folks out in the field and doing the legwork. They are on
the hunt for a serial killer and it is all hands on deck at home and as much
help as they can round up from others. They are chasing a serial killer who just
might have some victims still alive if they can find him and them. Time is
against law enforcement as once the media knows and the small town grapevine
gets going, not to mention social media, it will be all over for those they
hope to save.
Shifting in point of view
between the captives, the captor, and the numerous investigators, the book
rolls along at a steady pace. A significant portion of Field Of Bones: A Brady Novel of
Suspense is in the point of view of the main victim who learns what has
been going on to others for months. How she copes with the trauma of her
imprisonment and degradation is a major part of the read. As a result, some of
those sections are not easy reading as they are a bit graphic at times. As
those sections are in essence nothing more than the classic naked woman chained
in the basement with nothing to eat but dog food kibble as she is repeatedly raped
over the course of weeks, one could easily skip those sections and lose nothing
at all in reading the tale.
Overall, despite the usual --drop into the mind of the nutjob as
he is a smart crazy dude at it quite a while—sections that all such books seem
to have these days, the overall read is an average one. The book flows fairly well
and numerous secondary characters long known to readers are again given
attention in this read. Much is at work here in a personal as well as
professional way for Sheriff Joanna Brady and that results in a ton of
backstory in many different ways. Despite being billed as a novel of suspense, there
really is not much suspenseful about the book at all.
Field Of Bones: A Brady Novel of Suspense plows
along and gets the job done. It certainly is not J. A Jance at her best, nor is
it her at her worst. Instead, this is an average read that occasionally scores political
points that will no doubt offend some readers who will swear to never read another
book by her ever again while also managing to do the classic smug nutjob serial
killer shtick. Yes, it gets complicated in a paint by numbers sort of way.
Despite its noted flaws, Field Of Bones: A Brady Novel of Suspense holds
reader interest and continues the saga of Sheriff Joanna Brady.
Related Item of Interest:
CrimeReads spoiler filled interview with J. A. Jance from last
September: http://crimespreemag.com/interview-with-j-a-jance/
Field Of Bones: A Brady
Novel of Suspense
J.
A. Jance
Harper
Luxe (imprint of Harper Collins Publishers)
September
2018
ISBN#
978-0-06-285949-5
LARGE
PRINT (also available in hardback, audio, and digital formats)
496
Pages
$27.99
Material
supplied by the good folks of the Dallas Public Library System.
Kevin
R. Tipple ©2019
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