Genre: Mystery
Rating: 3.5 Water Towers
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“Damage Control” is a First Look early reader edition from HarperCollins. It will be delivered to stores in July 2008.
HarperCollins Short Review
An intruder is murdered. An elderly couple runs their car off a cliff while holding hands. A trailer fire kills a man. Skeletal remains are found in a plastic bag. A quiet weekend in Cochise County, Arizona is a thing of the past. “Damage Control” combines suicide, murder, and mayhem--with revelations concerning Sheriff Joanna Brady’s personal life--in a rousing mystery sure to keep you turning the pages far into the night.
End of Short Review
This is the first book I have read by J. A. Jance and I was not disappointed. Similar to other authors with long running characters, the comfort level J. A. Jance has with the characters is apparent. She smoothly mixes the realities of day-to-day life with sudden and unexpected events.
A very good book sure to please, and, I now have another series I can start reading. Hmmmm, I hope I forget the contents of this book by the time I start reading “Desert Heat”. I probably will….age being what it is.
“Damage Control” starts with the killing of an intruder in Tucson, Arizona. It then moves the action 100 miles away to Bisbee, Arizona where the book focuses on the lives of Sheriff Joanna Brady, her family and employees.
On this particular weekend, everyone was planning to have a relaxing time. Those plans are scuttled when Alfred and Martha Beasley ride their car off of a cliff at the Montezuma Pass Overlook. Witnesses tell Joanna that the couple seemed fine during their picnic lunch and they appeared to be holding hands as they went over cliff. The theory is that this may be a simple case of double suicide.
Then a monsoon struck.
In Arizona, when the rains come they can come with a vengeance. That night the washes (temporary rivers of water) were running and the phones were knocked out. The next morning Joanna is awakened by a deputy at her door with news of a fire and possible fatality in a nearby trailer park. At the scene we meet the wife of the man who died, Carol Sunderson, and her two grandchildren (the grandparents are raising the children), and dog. The family is now homeless with no income and no place to go.
Busy weekend, but it is not yet over.
After the washes dried out a bit, a young 14 year old boy, Luis Andrade struck out on his regular after wash treasure hunt. Instead of finding treasure, he finds the remains of a body in a plastic bag. Not sure what to do, he tells his Uncle Jaime Carbajal who happens to be one of Joanna’s detectives. Luis is sent to investigate and another mystery is added.
As the book progresses, we meet the Beasley’s two estranged (from each other) daughters, Samantha and Sandra. Their personalities, and hatred of each other, provide interesting moments and deepen the mystery of Alfred and Martha’s suicide.
Is there a reason behind the suicide other than Alfred fearing he was developing Alzheimer’s?
An arson investigator is called in to find out what started the trailer fire that killed Leonard Sunderson. Since he was in a wheelchair and ill suicide is suspected.
Was it suicide? An accident? Or something more sinister?
The skeleton in the bag is identified as Wanda Louise Mappin a developmentally disabled 31 year old. She had been missing from Holbrook House a home for the developmentally disabled.
Who killed Wanda and why?
Along the way we find out that Joanna’s late father had a lover and Joanna suspects her late husband may have had a lover as well…and a child with that person. Her efforts to find out the answers fill a small plotline along with the relationship of Joanna to her mother, Eleanor, and Eleanor’s relationship with her new husband, Coroner Dr. George Winfield.
The action and mystery deepens as the investigations uncover evidence, people die, and the seemingly unrelated incidents are tied together with surprising twists and turns.
As I said earlier, I now have another series to read. “Damage Control” was a thoroughly enjoyable book similar to Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone series…comfortable and smooth with very likeable characters.
