Dead Wrong (Joanna Brady Mysteries, 12)

This installment in the Sheriff Joanna Brady series was hard to put down. I liked the way the author had Joanna's Dad's diaries as part of the plot. We got to "know" him as well as see into the past. Joanna is a role model for all women. If you work hard enough you can have it all. You might even be able to work until you go into labor. Interesting twists and turns makes this book my favorite in the series so far. If you like action, mysteries, and reading about current social problems you will like this series and this novel.

What happened? An innocent man is railroaded by an inept police department and an uncaring judge, our pregnant lady sheriff is totally lacking in backbone as she takes much guff from a deputy, her mother, her mother-in-law and her teenage daughter, there is way too much left hanging, less about the in laws and the dogs and more about how the bad guy managed to do all that he did or was it someone else?

This book is difficult for me to review. 2.5 stars would probably be fair. It would make for an excellent Lifetime TV for Women Original Movie. Add a bowl of ice cream and you have the perfect late night diversion. But as a novel, it was actually pretty silly. Sheriff Brady is due to give birth at any moment, yet she continually puts her and her baby's lives in danger. That really made me uncomfortable. While the plot is interesting, the action of the characters is often reckless.

A few examples come immediately to mind. Sheriff Brady questions murder suspects in the field leaving her Kevlar vest behind because she is too pregnant to wear it. She initiates a high speed chase against an armed kidnapper telling her deputy to drive so that she can shoot! She jumps out of a car onto her stomach to shoot someone. Really? Much of the dialogue in those situations was silly and unprofessional.

As I said, the book wasn't exactly bad - especially if you like Lifetime movies, but there was no character development or anything really to draw the reader into caring about what happens next. Even the Sheriff's pregnancy was more of a prop, than anything real or meaningful.

The story might have been okay except for the LARGE error in the early going. We have our dead guy whose murder needs solving. His autopsy indicates he died from blunt force trauma to the head, but starting about 20 pages later and throughout the rest of the book, the characters refer to his stabbing death. When the stabbing was first mentioned, I thought the sheriff was trying to trick a suspect into admitting something, but then I realized it was the author's mistake. I hate it when this happens because it takes me right out of the story. I can't pay attention to the clues when I don't trust what I'm reading.

This is another wonderful book by the Author, I have read so many over the years, these people are familar to me.
Joanna Brady is a gutsy and very pregnant Sheriff, she has one thing after the other to tend to. A murdered man with his fingers cut off.
A friend in the animal control shelter of the county, with more than she can take care of. The beating and near death of a close friend and
co worker. The puzzle of past history of her father, his found journals and the knowledge of what that has to do with her current investigations.
What a story, especially when it all comes together with the new found information that not only clears up some current events, but deals with a
past case that has woven over the years to come to a head in this fast moving story. Joanna not only shoots the carjacker, but saves the day, just
as she finishes up her duty to her family and job. Wow...thanks again to J. A. Jance.

I bought this book and intend to buy all the others I do not have.

Not just "Dead Wrong", but the entire Joanna Brady series forms a well written progression in the lives of its continuing characters, and in the unbelievably crime-ridden area called Cochise County, in southeastern Arizona. Jance writes in a manner that effectively holds the reader's attention -- one of the few series that will keep me reading past my bed time. I have read the series one after another over the past few months, and have enjoyed the twists and turns in every book. Also a good mixture of light humor. While you know that the diminutive Sheriff Brady is going to "get her man" in the end, Jance throws in enough diversions that you aren't quite sure how she's going to bring it all together until that end. I especially appreciate the lack of vulgarities and excessive gory details -- proof that riveting stories can still be written without these "props".

I am a big fan of thriller/mystery books. This book is so poorly written and uninteresting it was effort for me to finish it. There are a lot of great authors out there, I wouldn't waste your time or money on JA Jance. Seriously, read Harlan Coben or someone with talent.

I tend to pick up the books in this series featuring southern Arizona sheriff Joanna Brady when I'm in airports or on the beach. Dead Wrong, like the others I have read in the series, is a serviceable murder mystery. In this one, Joanna is nine months pregnant and a lot of the side action involves family members fussing over her and her constant need for bathroom breaks. She's confronted with two cases: a murder victim who is himself a convicted murderer, whose fingers have been severed, and a suspected dogfighting ring.

For me, the interesting part was Brady's job, for which she stands election, encompassing Animal Control and the county jail as well as law enforcement. Her team is continually challenged by border control issues and staffing shortages caused by officers who also serve in the National Guard. The characters themselves are not particularly complex, with a lot of description of what they're like rather than having the reader infer it from their words and actions. It's not necessary to read the series in order, from what I can see.

If you have a trip to take, or a lounge chair at the beach with your name on it, Dead Wrong may have a place in your bag. If you are actually visiting Southeastern Arizona, I think it would be an even richer read.

Okay, so I liked [[ASIN:0380804700 Partner in Crime]] even better, but who's to say she won't surpass both of these wonderful novels with one in progress or not yet begun?

Joanna Brady has to contend with an almost-to-term pregnancy (little Dennis arrives on page 427 of 437), a key officer out sick, and her mother-in-law from hell, as well as the murder of an ex-con who had a connection with Joanna's father and a good reason for apparently stalking an innocent woman, and the near-murder of one of her officers. Also, the Border Patrol is demanding help from her that she is too short-handed to give, and there are 3 more murders, a kidnapping, and a suicide, and she is surprised when a woman she has known for some time comes out to her, revealing that her partner is one of Joanna's officers.

I am especially pleased with Ms. Jance's treatment of the lesbian couple as just two more human beings who, like most people, are good and valuable citizens. Joanna is no bigot. She rightly treated the lesbian couple as two of the citizens of Cochise County whom it was her duty to serve, and whose assistance she welcomed. As a white married male heterosexual natural-born American who has enjoyed the advantages of being so, I feel a special obligation to support the right of those who are not all of the above to equal treatment; to the loving acceptance advocated by Jesus, and Buddha, and Baha'ullah, and Muhammad, and others, and Judith A. Jance apparently feels much the same way, for which I applaud her.

But don't get the idea that this novel is preachy, because it isn't at all. Joanna Brady simply acts as a decent human being, without a trace of bigotry, and if the reader happens to notice that fact, ok; or if you are too caught up in the action and suspense to notice, that is ok too.

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As far as I know, Joanna Brady is still the only female sheriff among the 15 such fictional police officials in Arizona. Even the real sheriff of Cochise County is a male, Larry Dever by name. Joanna spends as little time as possible behind her desk, preferring to be in the thick of the ongoing investigations, even at the expense sometimes of family duties. In Dead Wrong, doing so has become very demanding, since she is in the last few weeks of her pregnancy. However, this tough little lady is not one to be slowed by this situation, even when she has to directly apprehend one of the bad guys in this very enjoyable tale. J. A. Jance excels at creating absorptive plots involving several interwoven lines. There is always the goings-on in Joanna's private life, which are interesting enough to support this series by themselves (well, maybe not quite). Joanna's husband, Butch Dixon, is graced by a mother who becomes the mother-in-law from hell for his wife, when she and her long-suffering husband show up unannounced to be around for the birth of Joanna's baby. It is a toss-up as to whether Butch's mother or Joanna's own is the more difficult to stand, but at least the elder Dixon does not live in Bisbee, as does Joanna's maternal progenitor. As I was reading the chapters involving the elder Dixons' visit, I was reminded of some of my own parents' visits to our home on the edge of the Everglades. I, however, am fortunate to get along very well with my mother-in-law...she lives in a foreign country. In this series entry, there are two main plot lines involving Joanna's professional life. One involves some mistreated canines and the other a family of long-time county residents the story of which goes back three generations. Through her dogged persistence, Joanna gradually pieces together the history of this family, while Jance provides the reader a series of unexpected plot twists that keep the interest level high, as is always the case in this remarkable series of novels that can have one alternatively laughing out loud, gasping from shock, and reeling in amazement as the story unfolds. This is the twelfth in a series of fourteen novels to date, so soon I am going to have to determine whether any of the other Jance series can maintain my interest as this one has.