As the daughter of a local lawman, Joanna learned early about the world's evils, and felt uniquely prepared for even the worst cards life could deal her. But when her young husband, an Arizona policeman, was murdered - leaving her a widow and the single mother of a nine-year-old girl - it was time to fold or play, and Joanna played to win. Not only did she expose the criminal conspiracy that had robbed Andy Brady of his life, but she bluffed her way into the position that, by rights, should have been his: Sheriff of Cochise County. Attempting to put her pain on the back burner, Joanna struggles daily to find the strength to go on - as mother to Jenny...and as the leader of her silently doubting deputies. Those doubts have become considerably more vocal now that Joanna has placed herself out on a limb as the only believer in ex-cop Hal Morgan's innocence. On the day when Bonnie Morgan should have been celebrating a joyous nineteenth wedding anniversary, she was fatally mowed down by a drunk driver while crossing a street in downtown Phoenix. Her husband Hal has never stopped protesting the wrist-slap of a sentence that passed for justice. So when the driver is found almost a year to the day later, baked to a crisp in his smoldering barn, all fingers point to still-grieving widower Hal. All fingers, that is, except Sheriff Joanna Brady's. Refusing to accept the easy answer to a seemingly open-and-shut case of murder - battling the predictable charges of sympathy-run-amok that have been lowered by her seasoned underlings - Joanna is suddenly caught in a maelstrom of danger and deception. As she trails the truth from a ghostly mining camp to the rocky spires of the Chiricahua National Monument, gut instinct quickly evolves into the will to survive when Joanna finds herself not only upholding the law but, instead, battling for her own life. Because now a killer is turning his sights on her. The best thing about Jance's books is Joanna Brady who became an Arizona county sheriff after her father and husband died on the job. Jance can move Brady from an exciting, dangerous scene on one page to a sensitive, touching personal moment on the next. In her latest outing, Brady is looking into two major crimes. But that doesn't stop her from giving a terrific speech about why selling Girl Scout cookies gave her confidence, or worrying about a friend trying to adopt a child in China, or even finally beginning to understand what makes her annoying mother tick. Earlier books in the Brady series: Desert Heat, Tombstone Courage, Shoot, Don't Shoot. Jance also authors the popular J.P. Beaumont series, which includes Dismissed With Prejudice, Failure to Appear, Lying in Wait, Name Withheld, Without Due Process. The up-and-coming Jance's last mystery, Tombstone Courage (Morrow, 1994), nudged its way onto the national best sellers lists. Here, she continues the adventures of Arizona sheriff Joanna Brady. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. Joanna Brady, now the newly elected sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona, returns in her fourth mystery. When veterinarian Amos Buckwalter is murdered, all fingers point to Hal Morgan, the angry husband of a woman the drunken vet killed in a car accident the previous year. When she alone thinks he's innocent, Brady, herself a bereaved widow, is unsure if her personal feelings are getting in the way of her professional judgment. More deaths follow as the emotionally fragile Brady attempts to juggle her own family problems (a demanding nine-year-old daughter and a domineering mother) with the trials of her job and a potential new love interest. Jance expertly introduces multiple subplots and does a fine job of drawing her characters and creating a sense of the small community of Bisbee, Arizona. With the success of the previous Joanna Brady mysteries and of her J. P. Beaumont series set in Seattle, Jance is hot and getting hotter. Expect demand. Benjamin Segedin A fourth outing for Joanna Brady (Shoot, Don't Shoot, 1995, etc.), who's not only the sheriff of Arizona's Cochise County-- and that means administrator, investigator, crisis manager, grief counselor, and on-call patroller--but also a full-time mother, daughter, and daughter-in-law. Joanna's biggest case this time is the torching of unloved veterinarian Amos Buckwalter's barn with him inside. Everything points to Hal Morgan, whose wife was the victim of Bucky's lethal binge of drunk driving a year ago, as the killer. But Joanna's impressed by Morgan's claims of innocence and appalled by the Widow Buckwalter's unseemly lack of mourning (a round of golf and a makeover the following day), which contrasts so vividly with Joanna's continued grieving for her own husband. Besides Bucky's murder, there are other cases- -the death of ancient Reed Carruthers, a smuggler's fatal car crash--but more important are the endless domestic intrigues of Joanna's circle. What's holding up her friend Marianne Maculyea's adoption of a Chinese orphan