Skeleton Canyon
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4.5 • 11 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Top ten New York Times bestselling author J.A. Jance brings us another mesmerizing thriller featuring Arizona Sheriff Joanna Brady as she searches for the brutal killer of a young girl.
Brianna "Bree" O'Brien never returned from Skeleton Canyon. Someone brutally murdered the pretty, popular teenager who had stolen away under cover of darkness to rendezvous with her boyfriend. Perhaps youthful rage, jealousy and savage passion cost young Bree her life. Or maybe she stumbled onto something too dangerous to know. Sheriff Joanna Brady of Cochise County knows only too well the pain of losing a loved one to violence. But she is disturbed by the O'Brien's insistence that Bree's boyfriend is responsible for their daughter's slaying. Joanna senses there are words not being spoken, and dark mysteries locked behind doors of the sprawling O'Brien family compound. But it is the strange disappearance of a good friend that is pulling Sheriff Brady ever closer to the lethal nest of lies, greed and secrets hiding in a desolate corner of the Arizona desert - where the next blood that feeds the parched, cracked earth could be her own.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jance is an expert at writing rich mysteries filled with as much human decency as skullduggery. When high-school valedictorian Bree O'Brien is found dead in the southeastern Arizona mountains, suspicion falls on her boyfriend, Ignacio Ybarra, who refuses to explain his fresh cuts and bruises. But the case isn't that simple, as Cochise County Sheriff Joanna Brady learns in this fifth adventure (after Dead to Rights). Bree and Ignacio had been meeting secretly because her wealthy father hates Hispanics. When Ignacio is cleared, Joanna suspects that another case may be connected with the homicide. Someone has been smuggling Freon across the border, cashing in on high black-market prices for the refrigerant. Are Bree's parents involved? And would any amount of smuggling money make them kill their own daughter? Why did O'Brien hire an ex-cop with an unsavory past who often leered at Bree? And why did Bree write in her journal, "My mother is a liar"? Joanna tackles the cases while still coping with the loneliness of her recent widowhood and a startling personal revelation about her mother. This is a solid yarn with strong characters and a full palette of local color. Jance's regional knowledge runs deep, whether she writes about troubled Anglo-Hispanic relations along the border or the surprising power of Arizona thunderstorms. 100,000 first printing; major ad/promo. FYI: Skeleton Canyon will be simultaneously published with the mass market reprint of Dead to Rights.
