Joanna Brady returns in J.A. Jance's ninth adventure featuring the Arizona sheriff. Joanna and Butch, her new husband, are trying to build their dream house, adjust to their marriage, and cope with the preteen mood swings of Joanna's 12-year-old daughter, Jenny. During a Girl Scout camping trip to Cochise County, Jenny and another girl sneak out of their tents after lights out to have a cigarette and stumble on the body of a murder victim. Joanna is initially more concerned about her daughter's misbehavior than the murder at Apache Pass--after all, smoking can kill you--but then Dora Matthews, Jenny's coconspirator, is killed. Joanna's fear that her daughter might be in the killer's sights adds an extra dose of adrenaline to her efforts to find the man who left the body for Jenny and Dora to find. Add that worry to the sheriff's suspicion that Butch may be having an affair with a former girlfriend and you have the makings of a typical Joanna Brady novel: long on intelligence, empathy, and humanity and short on shootouts and suspense. Jance's other series, featuring Seattle cop J.P. Beaumont, features more intricate plotting and louder firepower. Brady's not as complex as Beaumont or as fully developed a character, but she leads with her heart, and her struggles to balance her personal and professional life bring interest. The Southwest landscape comes to life in the author's capable hands, and while the narrative's pacing is a little pokey, there's lots of lovingly evoked scenery to make it a pleasant trip. --Jane Adams

From Publishers Weekly
In Cochise County (Ariz.) sheriff Joanna Brady's ninth outing, bestseller Jance verges on soap opera, but avoids the worst excesses of the type. Mother-daughter relationships get a real workout, as Joanna's brittle connection with her mother is always testy and the emotional fulcrum between Joanna and her 12-year-old daughter, Jenny, is always shifting. But plenty of other combinations of blood and bonding get a workout, too. Jenny and a camping partner discover the body of a naked woman while Joanna and new husband Butch Dixon are out of town to attend a sheriffs' convention and a wedding. Joanna's personal and professional lives collide heavily as concerns for her daughter, her department, her husband and her future intertwine. With a mix of old and modern police work (interviews, crime-scene analysis, sophisticated forensics) and intense personal problems (Jenny may be targeted by the killer, Butch may have cheated on Joanna, Joanna's mother's meddling may have gotten a girl killed), Jance keeps things roiling from start to finish. With more than two dozen mysteries to her credit, the author has learned a great deal about pacing and it's evident in this page-turner, which nicely builds suspense and throws in some nifty surprises as well. Jance's sense of place remains strong, whether here in the beautifully rendered rural Arizona setting or in the rainy Seattle of her J.P. Beaumont mysteries. (Aug. 7)Forecast: With a one-day laydown and strong marketing backing, including a 12-city tour and radio and print advertising, this book will hit the lists fast.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-When Sheriff Joanna Brady's 12-year-old daughter finds a dead woman on a Girl Scout camping trip, the family becomes peripherally involved in the murder, and then in a second one, of a scout who was with Jenny on the trip. The sheriff then finds herself trying to balance the demands of solving both murders when a third occurs. Sorting out parallels among the killings proves to be the way to solve the complicated plot intertwinings, which Brady accomplishes in a competent and professional manner. Jance once again provides an interesting scenario for the crimes, including a weaving together of the seemingly unconnected murders. Using the sheriff's family as main characters conveys an insider's view of what life must be like for kin of law-enforcement officers. Jance gives enough details to round out the characters familiar from other books in this series to give readers the sense that they personally know Brady. The story is set in rural Arizona, and the grand expanses of land and time are at once beautiful and a challenge. An entertaining read, even for newcomers to the series.Pam Johnson, Fairfax County Public Library, VACopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Joanna Brady--devoted mother, new wife, harried Arizona sheriff--returns here for her ninth adventure. As the story opens, she is attending a law-enforcement conference and dealing over the telephone with various departmental troubles. One call, however, sends her home in a hurry. Her daughter, Jenny, along with another young girl, Dora Matthews, have stumbled over a dead body in the woods during a Girl Scout camping trip. A few days later, Dora turns up dead as well. Joanna must deal not only with trying to determine motives for and connections between the two murders but also with the fear that her daughter may be the next target. Much crisscrossing of Arizona ensues as suspects emerge and leads are followed. As in Jance's previous novels, the southwestern setting is lovingly and skillfully detailed. Joanna Brady is a realistic heroine trying to balance work in an understaffed department with family--a teenage daughter, an overbearing mother, and an oft-neglected husband. Dialogue is a weak point for Jance, however, and she needs to trust her readers to remember character names and connections rather than laboriously repeating them scene after scene. Despite the flaws, though, the pieces of the mystery fall together in intriguing and convention-defying ways, and the question of whether Joanna will seek reelection sets the stage for another installment in this popular series. Carrie Bissey
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM OUR EDITORS

When Cochise County sheriff Joanna Brady and her husband, Butch Dixon, head out of town for a long weekend of business and pleasure, she's happy to know that her 12-year-old daughter, Jenny, will be enjoying herself, too. On Jenny's agenda is a Girl Scout camp-out, and though the recent dry spell has quashed any chances of an honest-to-goodness campfire, Joanna is confident that Jenny will have a good time.

She couldn't be more wrong. Paired with an unpopular 13-year-old named Dora Matthews as her tent mate, Jenny struggles from the start to make the best of what promises to be a difficult weekend. But Jenny's weekend is cut short early, when the two girls break the rules by sneaking away from their troop on the very first night and discover the naked body of a murdered woman hidden in the brush not far from their campsite. And when Dora's body turns up just a few short days later, broken and twisted on the side of a road, Joanna's worry for her daughter grows by leaps and bounds.

What motive could someone have that would drive them to murder both the woman and such a young girl? Are the two murders connected? Will her own daughter be the next victim of a killer out to silence any and all witnesses? As these terrifying questions and more race through Joanna's mind, and her prime suspect provides what appears to be an airtight alibi, it's all Joanna can do to keep her mind on the job.

But now, more than ever, Joanna needs a cool head and a steady trigger finger. Because on a case that will magnify every maternal instinct Joanna's ever had --and challenge every notion she's ever held about motherhood -- it's going to take all of Joanna's commitment and strength to catch a killer and keep her daughter safe from harm.

In Paradise Lost, J. A. Jance once again weaves evocative settings, unforgettable characters and a breathtaking plot into an emotionally vivid story about a realistic heroine striving to balance her passion for justice with her love for family.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Dora Matthews and Jennifer Brady, both thirteen, couldn't be less alike-yet the luck of the draw has made them tent mates at a Girl Scout Memorial Day weekend camping trip at Apache Pass. Dora is a wild child, a pregnant, fatherless waif with a missing junkie mother. Jennifer is the innocent daughter of Joanna Brady, the sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona. In the cool blackness of the high desert night, they slip away at Dora's prodding. What they find on their unauthorized hike will change their lives forever: the body of a murdered Phoenix heiress, abandoned to scavengers and the elements.

Sheriff Brady fears the traumatic damage that her daughter's grim discovery may have inflicted on the frightened teenager. Right now, however Joanna's foremost concern is the job she was elected to do, and she sets out on the trial of the dead woman's lowlife husband who cleaned out their accounts before he vanished himself.

The stakes get drastically higher in very short order when something happens to poor damaged and neglected Doran Matthews that hits Joanna like a runaway truck. Someone believes that the two girls who were where they shouldn't have been two nights earlier are now loose ends that need to be tied up. And Joanna's own Jenny may very well be the next item on a killer's bloody agenda.

But one killer could turn out to be two-or perhaps even three. Suddenly terror has invaded Sheriff Joanna Brady's world in a form too awful to contemplate. As the nightmares of her professional and personal lives interweave-as a disturbing cloud of suspicion darkens the joy of her on barely one-month-old marriage-she knows that there are answers out in the wilderness that must be uncovered before time runs out. With everything she loves in jeopardy, one dedicated mother, wife, and law officer must piece together a deadly puzzle in which nothing seems to fit-as the clues and her keen instinct point her toward a place of secrets and bizarre cultlike obsession that some call "Paradise."

SYNOPSIS

Dora Matthews and Jennifer Brady, both thirteen, couldn't be less alike -- yet the luck of the draw has made them tentmates at a Girl Scout Memorial Day weekend camping trip at Apache Pass. Dora is a wild child, a pregnant, fatherless waif with a missing junkie mother. Jenny is the innocent daughter of Joanna Brady, the sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona. In the cool blackness of the high desert night, they slip away at Dora's prodding. What they find on their unauthorized hike will change their lives forever: the body of a murdered Phoenix heiress, abandoned to scavengers and the elements.

Sheriff Brady fears the traumatic damage that her daughter's grim discovery may have inflicted on the frightened teenager. Now, however, Joanna's foremost concern is the job she was elected to do, and she sets out on the trail of the dead woman's lowlife husband, who cleaned out their accounts before he vanished.

The stakes get drastically higher in very short order when something happens to poor damaged and neglected Dora Matthews that hits Joanna like a runaway truck. Someone believes that the two girls who were where they shouldn't have been two nights earlier are now loose ends that need to be tied up. And Joanna's own Jenny may very well be the next item on a killer's bloody agenda.

FROM THE CRITICS

Dallas Morning News

A strong appreciation for the Arizona countryside...a stronger central character.

Chicago Tribune

Joanna Brady is a delightful character.

People

Jance delivers a devilish page-turner.

Flint Journal

In the elite company of Sue Grafton and Patricia Cornwell.

Chattanooga Times