Showing results by author "J. A. Jance" in All Categories

Sheriff Joanna Brady is looking forward to the holidays with her busy family, and to celebrating her daughter Jenny’s graduation from the police academy. But the family is interrupted when a body is discovered beneath a flooded bridge in the Arizona desert, and Joanna is called onto the case. A young boy was murdered, and the details of the crime scene tell Joanna two things: This was not the killer’s first murder. And it’s only a matter of time before he kills again.

With a baby on the way, sudden deaths in the family from which to recover, a reelection campaign looming, and a daughter heading off for college, Cochise County Sheriff Joanna Brady has her hands full when a puzzling new case hits her department, demanding every resource she has at her disposal.

After taking down the man responsible for his best friend's death, Stuart Ramey thinks the case is finally closed. That is, until Stu finds himself left with a multimillion-dollar fortune in Bitcoin in a desperate bid by Frigg, a rogue AI program created by the killer, to keep itself from being fully deactivated. To sort out his situation and take Frigg down for good, Stu enlists the help of Ali Reynolds and the rest of his cyber-security colleagues at High Noon Enterprises. But they are not the only ones who know about Frigg's existence.

Before he retired, J. P. Beaumont had looked forward to having his days all to himself. But too much free time doesn't suit a man used to brushing close to danger. When his longtime nemesis, retired Seattle crime reporter Maxwell Cole, dies in what's officially deemed to be an accidental fire, Beau is astonished to be dragged into the investigation at the request of none other than the deceased victim himself. In the process Beau learns that just because a long-ago case was solved doesn't mean it's over.

A woman is cruelly cut down in a remote corner of Arizona, killed on her nineteenth wedding anniversary by a drunk motorist. A year later, the driver himself dies badly, and all suspicions point to the slain woman's still-grieving husband as his murderer. But the truth is rarely black and white in the long Southwestern shadows, and one law officer is not rushing to condemn the tragic widower so quickly - Joanna Brady, sheriff of Cochise County.

A prisoner languishes in a Phoenix jail cell, accused of brutally slaying his estranged wife. No one believes the man is innocent, except the new female sheriff of Cochise County, in town for a crash course in police training. Joanna Brady is out of her jurisdiction?and possibly in over her head. For a human monster is on the prowl, hiding the grisly evidence of his horrific crimes in the vast emptiness of the Arizona desert.

As she passes the site of a horrifying accident, Ali is grateful that it's no longer her job to report the news, until she finds out that the news is her own: the victim is Ali's cheating husband. And soon she'll find herself the prime suspect at the center of a terrifying web of evil.

A shadow from J. P. Beaumont's past shows up after 30 years, an ex-girlfriend whose husband has been brutally murdered.

When Santa Cruz County deputy sheriff Jose Reyes, Ali’s classmate from the Arizona Police Academy, is gunned down and left to die, he is at first assumed to be an innocent victim of the drug wars escalating across the border. But the crime scene investigation shows there’s much more to it than that, and soon he and his pregnant wife, Teresa, both fall under suspicion of wrongdoing. Ali owes Reyes a debt of gratitude for the help he gave her years earlier when she was dealing with a troubled friend. When she’s summoned to his bedside at Physicians Medical Center in Tucson, she can't turn away.

At first glance, the video appears to be showing a childish game: a teenage girl with dark wavy hair smiles for the camera, a blue scarf tied around her neck. All of a sudden things turn murderous, and the girl ends up dead. It’s as bad as a snuff film can get, and what’s worse, the clip has been discovered on a phone that belongs to the grandson of Washington State’s governor. However, the boy, who has a troubled background, swears that he’s never seen the victim before.

Jonas Piedmont Beaumont has had a hard life and learned at a young age how hard life can be. Two marriages, a treacherous battle with the bottle, assorted midlife and moral dilemmas, and a few decades as a homicide detective haven't convinced him otherwise. When Beau and his new partner Sue Danielson are assigned the murder of an elderly woman torched to death in her bed, Beau finds himself distracted by Sue's difficulties at home.

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.

Chuck Brewster, the former business partner of Ali Reynolds’s husband B. Simpson, once carried on an affair with Clarice, B.’s first wife. So when he’s found murdered with Clarice standing nearby covered in blood, it seems an open and shut case. But Clarice swears she’s innocent and begs for Ali’s help. At the same time, someone is targeting Camille Lee while she’s on the road for High Noon. Ali is swiftly running out of time to find the real killer and keep her employee safe in this high-octane thrill ride.

Former Seattle homicide cop J. P. Beaumont is learning to enjoy the new realities of retirement - doing morning crossword puzzles by a roaring fireplace; playing Frisbee with his new dog; having quiet lunches with his still-working wife. But then his past comes calling.

Juggling a family and a career is never easy - and it's becoming a real challenge for Sheriff Joanna Brady. Coping with the impending delivery of her second child as well as a staff shortage, the last things Joanna needs are two serious crimes. First, the body of an unidentified man is found in the desert, all of his fingers savagely severed. Following the scant clues, Joanna learns that the victim was an ex-con who had served 20 years in prison after confessing to the murder of his pregnant wife. During his last days, he was seen following and photographing a young woman.

A pretty, popular teenager never returned from her secret tryst in Skeleton Canyon. Perhaps it was a youthful rage or savage passion that ripped the life from a child of privilege and abandoned her broken body to the cold Arizona night. Or maybe she stumbled onto something terrible, something too dangerous to know. Now dark secrets about a future hideously destroyed are pulling Sheriff Joanna Brady of Cochise County into a lethal nest of lies and greed.

Roger McGeary, a brilliant software engineer, has gifted himself with an upscale cruise in honor of his 40th birthday. When he falls to his death from the balcony of his stateroom suite, the incident is quickly declared a suicide. Only his maiden aunt, a tough-as-nails woman who runs a racehorse refuge, refuses to take "case closed" for an answer and turns to Ali Reynolds at High Noon Enterprises to look into the situation.

The investigation of LaShawn Tompkins's murder seemed straightforward enough. Upon his release from death row, the ex-drug-dealer returned to his old neighborhood where he was gunned down on his mother's doorstep. Just another case of turf warfare. At least that's what it looks like on the surface to Seattle investigator J. P. Beaumont, who's been handed the assignment under the strictest confidence.

Since the disbanding of the Special Homicide Investigation Team, JP Beaumont's biggest concern is pondering whether he and his wife, Mel, should finally get a dog. But one voicemail from his old friend Ralph Ames is about to change that. Through Ralph, Beau has become involved in an organization called The Last Chance, which enlists a number of retired homicide investigators to tackle long unsolved cold cases. The one that has just landed on Beau's plate is a 30-year-old missing person case.

A cop lies dying beneath the blistering Arizona sun - a local lawman who may well have become the next sheriff of Cochise County. The police brass claim that Andy Brady was dirty, and that his shooting was a suicide attempt. Joanna Brady, his devoted wife and mother of their nine-year-old daughter, knows a cover-up when she hears one...and murder when she sees it.