Review: Blessing of the Lost Girls: A Brady and Walker Family Novel by J. A. Jance

Blessing of the Lost Girls: A Brady and Walker Family Novel by J. A. Jance is an engrossing read currently scheduled to be published on September 19^th.  One should make sure to read both of the afterwords as they are very important to the context of the story.

Readers are first introduced to Charlie Milton and it is clear very soon that he is a really bad guy. One of those guys that neighbors always say afterwards during media interviews that the guy was odd and just didn’t fit in right with other folks.

It is February 2019 as the book begins and Charlie Milton is in town for the Tucson Rodeo. Charlie Milton is a serial killer. He likes to hunt for the right victim. He has a type. He prefers women of color, especially those from Indian reservations. He counts on law enforcement arguing over which agency should handle the missing person case which means the case went cold long before it ever started. That works well for serial killers like Charlie Milton. Once he has killed, he soon hits the road in his RF and drifts to the next place.

What he didn’t count on was that fact that DNA from a kill he did several years ago would make its way into the system in 2022. It did. Field Officer Dan Pardee works for a new federal agency, Missing and Murdered Indigenous People’s Task Force. Known as “MIP,” they are part of the Department of The Interior. Their mission is to work cases involving the disappearances and deaths of Native Americans.

Dan Pardee, an investigator with a background in Border Patrol, is assigned the case of Rosa Rios. With the DNA match, it makes it clear to everyone that it was her charred body was found three years ago on a rancher’s land in the jurisdiction of Sheriff Joanna Brady of Cochise County. He is going to work the case. He will need Sheriff’s Brady’s help in bringing justice and, hopefully, a little peace to her family.

What follows is a complicated read. Dan Pardee is the focus, but Brady and her family make a number of appearances in this very enjoyable read. A tale that also, in addition to providing a complicated and enjoyable mystery, brings attention to what has been going on for decades for missing indigenous women. Complicated and fast moving, Blessing of the Lost Girls: A Brady and Walker Family Novel by J. A. Jance is well worth your time and attention.

 

My reading copy came by way of a NetGalley ARC with no expectation of a review.

 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2023