Product Description

On a beautiful sunny day in the Coronado National Monument, an elderly couple's car goes off the side of a mountain and into oblivion. The terrain is so rocky that a helicopter must be flown in to retrieve the bodies, and to make matters worse, a thunder-storm is looming on the horizon. Hours later and miles away, the subsiding rain reveals gruesome evidence: two trash bags containing human remains.

It's just another day in the life of Cochise County sheriff Joanna Brady.

Back at home, Joanna has a newborn baby, a teenage daughter, a writer husband, and a difficult mother to deal with. But in the field, it turns out that she has much more on her hands. The remains are those of a handicapped woman who had wandered away from a care facility with a suspicious track record. Another resident, with whom the woman may have been involved, has also been reported missing.

Meanwhile, a note is found in the glove compartment of the car lying twisted down the mountainside, stating that its occupants intended to take their own lives. Yet a contradictory autopsy report surfaces, and when the deceased's two daughters show up to feud over their inheritance, Joanna knows there is more to this case than just a suicide pact.

And she will go all out to find the truth—no matter where it leads.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #78858 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-22
• Released on: 2008-07-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Sheriff Joanna Brady and her staff face a host of challenges while her husband, Butch, tends their infant son in bestseller Jance's solid 13th novel to feature the Cochise County, Ariz., cop (after Dead Wrong). A woman shoots a home intruder, an elderly couple drive their car off a cliff and a mysterious fire kills an older man and leaves three homeless. Were these accidents or something more sinister? When Det. Jaime Carbajal's nephew discovers a body in the desert, the investigation leads to a shady organization that operates halfway houses for troubled and disabled persons. Meanwhile, Joanna must deal with her interfering mother, who exhibits a sudden personality change, and the discovery of family secrets about her late father and late first husband. As usual, Jance beautifully evokes the desert and towns of her belovedsouthwest as well as the strong individuals who live there. 10-city author tour. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Cochise County, Arizona, Sheriff Joanna Brady is a sleep-deprived new mother working long hours on several investigations. An elderly couple’s car soars over the guardrail at Montezuma Pass Overlook. Were their deaths suicide, or is something more sinister going on? The couple’s feuding daughters add complications. Meanwhile, a teenager, a nephew of one of Joanna’s deputies, finds skeletal remains in a garbage bag and later turns up missing. On the home front, Joanna and her husband, author Butch Dixon, must share child-care duties, while Joanna also deals with her rocky relationship with her mother, who is at odds with Joanna’s stepfather, the county medical examiner. Police procedure, county budget woes, and the problems inherent in law-enforcement agencies cooperating with one another frame the fast-paced mystery. This thirteenth in a series ends with substantive changes coming to Joanna’s department. --Sue O'Brien

Review
"Jance beautifully evokes the desert and towns of her beloved southwest as well as the strong individuals who live there." -- Publishers Weekly

Customer Reviews

SUSPENSEFUL, ENGROSSING, ENTERTAINING

Popular Arizona author J. A. Jance is an expert at opening her stories with grabbers. She pulls this off again in Damage Control by introducing Lauren Dayson, a young woman, "a good girl daughter" in jeopardy.

After Lauren's junior year in college she had moved in with Rick Mosier . He was kind of a wild guy, prone to carrying knives in his backpack. She was sure pairing with him would drive her parents crazy. Rebellion time for this once obedient daughter!

Nonetheless, Rick had once fascinated her - until he blackened her eye for supposedly flirting then later broke her arm. Fascination turned to fear so she moved into her own apartment, had window bars installed, even bought and learned how to shoot a Glock 26 semiautomatic. He had sworn that he would get to her even though she "papered Pima County with restraining orders," and she believed him.

Awakened one night by the barking of her little dog, Lauren just knew Rick had broken in. Mustering all of her courage, she sat up in bed , waiting until a tall form entered her room and then she fired - again and again and again. She had killed him and she had every right to save for the fact that the dead man was not Rick.

Case 1 for Cochise County Sheriff Joanna Brady. It doesn't seem difficult, and what Joanna doesn't need is anything tough as she's a hard working mom to a baby and a teenager, married to a writer, and her mother doesn't make life easy. True to form, of course, it is a very tough case - not at all what it seems.

Then Case 2 faces her when an old car drives through a retaining wall to do a half gainer off a mountain side. It's necessary to use a helicopter to reach the victims, but victims aren't all Joanna discovers. It seems that everywhere she turns new clues turn up revealing a much darker side to events as well as information of a personal nature.

With this, the 13th in the Joanna Brady series, Jance slows down not a bit but continues at full throttle to entertain and intrigue countless readers.

- Gail Cooke

Frustrating read!
Warning: spoilers

Now, I love Joanna Brady. I love the series so much I drove hours from Tucson TWICE to visit Bisbee. But this book was a frustrating read. I kept waiting for the main story line to begin, only instead of a main story line, it was a series of fragmented stories. No mention of the beauty of the desert in Cochise County, no mention that Butch is apparently set for life after selling his restaurant in Glendale, or that Joanna inherited $300K in insurance money after her first husband was murdered, no mention of lots of details that were established in earlier books. I find that insulting. And how did Jenny get Kiddo her horse to Cassie's place? Off the highways, it's all mountain and steep gorges 'round those parts.

What else? Oh yes: a 4 month old does not get bottles at night any longer. Especially if the 4 month is started on solid food. Joanna and Butch and baby should be sleeping more during the night. And Joanna doesn't spend nearly as much time as she should with her baby. She has deputies! I'm a working mother too, but the descriptions of Joanna's days without meals or sleep are ridiculous. Why does she have to come off as a superwoman or martyr? It's the worst portrayal, in my opinion, of Joanna since "Partners in Crime" (one case with JP and she's ready to abandon Butch?).

The opening chapter set such a tone of terror but its denouement (for this strand of the story) was so unsatisfactory, I wanted to throw the book in disgust.

And how did Larry Wolfe manage to drive from Cochise County to Hudspeth County Texas in something like 2 hours? Just to drive from Gallup NM to Albuquerque takes on the order of 4 hrs, and that's only half across NM.

Joanna's stepfather just ups and quits on her right after Frank Montoya tells her he's in for Chief of Sierra Vista- and she's down a deputy due to the death of the rookie! What will she do, hire Dick Voland back to be Chief Deputy? I don't think so. The entire shtick with Eleanor made zero sense (when did Eleanor ever?), but to wrap it up with George quitting and Eleanor and George motoring off, towing a Mazda Miata to Minnesota (at $4.50 a gal for gas) made me wonder if Jance is losing her zest for Joanna. She's long said that JP Beaumont is her favorite creation and that's fine. But if she's going to dilute the Joanna Brady series by writing this kind of loose pablum she's going to loose a significant fan base, the one that doesn't like her 3 other series.

Maybe that's what happens when authors leave too much time elapse between books in a series. The Joanna Brady series is one of my favorites. Let's hope for better in the next installment and hopefully, that will come soon.

Good Storyline but Some Annoying Characters
I have not read all of the Joanna Brady books so not sure how her character has morphed but I found Joanna's character to be a bit annoying in this one. (I have read a couple others and didn't find her quite so annoying in the other 2) I don't know if the author is intentionally making her an insecure character or it's just the way I'm preceiving it. She is never home and when she is she finds fault with all of Butch's decisions. Someone has to take care of things. She has a baby boy she hardly spends any time with and when she does I don't sense any cuddling or caring about what she's doing. The same with Butch-now this isn't a romance book but this is her husband and other than a quick peck on the cheek that's it and that usually comes from Butch. She has to be in control at all times at work also. Her staff is quite capable of making decisions and Frank even advises her from time to time that she's making a mistake but she won't back down because she ALWAYS has to make the decision. No wonder he leaves by the end of the book. And how lame was it when one of her deputies gets killed and she goes on and on about how it was his own fault because he didn't call for back up. IT didn't seem like when you heard a noise that you would immediately call for back up but want to check it out first. It might have just been an animal prowling and by the time back up came it would probably have been too late anyway.

The mystery itself might have been okay as a storyline but I just felt Joanna personnaly was very annoying. Even the suspicion that her husband had an affair. Years after his death she looks at a picture on the wall of the break room and sees a blonde woman and suddenly thinks her husband was having an affair with her. That was pretty far out!

Then I got the idea from another book that they both had come into money but in this one they talk like they can hardly make ends meet!???

I gave it 3 stars because the mystery part was somewhat interesting. However on the front of the book it says "A Novel of Suspense" H-m-m-m! I kept waiting for the suspense! Wasn't there!