First Line: Lauren Dayson was sleeping soundly when some small noise in the front room of the apartment disturbed her.

Sheriff Brady almost needs a road map to keep track of all the action. Her husband, Butch, is working on a novel and taking care of their infant son. A woman shoots a home intruder. An elderly couple do a Thelma and Louise off a cliff at the Chiricahua National Monument. The nephew of a Cochise County detective finds a body out in the desert. A mobile home fire leaves one dead and three homeless. Something's not quite right in an organization that operates halfway houses for troubled and disabled persons. If that's not enough, Joanna has two sixty-something sisters duke it out in a popular restaurant, Butch's publisher wants him to go on a book tour, and her own mother is acting very strangely...even for her. Some of these things are connected; some of them aren't. It's up to Joanna to make sense of them all as sheriff of a county that's larger than the state of Connecticut.

If anyone asks me about my favorite mystery series, this one is always one of the very first I mention. It's like coming home from a stressful day at work, stripping off the work clothes, putting on something old and comfy, and stretching out on the couch to get caught up with favorite family members and friends. None of the characters in these books are cardboard cut-outs. The way Jance has Joanna grow, not only as sheriff, wife, mother, and daughter, but as a person is a thing of beauty to experience.

As much as I love the characters and the plots of the books in this series, I also love them for the setting: Bisbee and Cochise County in Arizona. Reading these books made me ask my husband if he wanted to spend our honeymoon at the Copper Queen Hotel in Bisbee. When we got there, I fell in love with the town and the county. I've since discovered a lovely cottage in the Mule Mountains outside of Bisbee, and we return there every January. The history, the sky islands, the wildlife, the towns, the people...I've gotten to experience it all because of reading these books.

I would be hard pressed to choose a favorite book in this series, but Damage Control would be right at the top.

Wow!

I had forgotten how GREAT J.A. Jance is until I received and immediately began to read "Damage Control" with Arizona sheriff Joanna Brady. Thank goodness today is Saturday and is wet and messy, to boot. Gave me the perfectly acceptable excuse to curl up on my couch and read.

This is #13 in the Joanna Brady series. Hope there are many more to come.

Alice M.

Now I love Joanna Brady. I love the series so much I drove hours from Tucson TWICE to visit Bisbee (trust me,it's worth seeing). I can't wait to visit AZ again this November and will certainly be back in Cochise County (Wonderland of Rocks here I come). But this book was a frustrating read. I kept waiting for the main story line to begin, only instead of a main story line, it was a series of fragmented stories. No mention of the beauty of the desert in Cochise County, no mention that Butch is apparently set for life after selling his restaurant in Glendale, no mention that Marianne Maculyea reconciled with her mother when Ruth's twin died years earlier. And how did Jenny get Kiddo to the Parks' old KOA RV park? Off the highways, it's all mountain and steep gorges 'round those parts.

Where to begin? Oh yes- a 4 month old does not get bottles at night any longer!! Especially if the 4 month is started on solid food- once the baby gets solid food it should be sleeping from midnight or earlier to about 6 am. It is not a newborn!

The opening chapter sets such a tone of terror but its denouement (for this strand of the story) is so unsatisfactory, I wanted to throw the book in disgust. Jance can set up a story with the best of them but this was lame.

The exposee of the managing company of the residential homes left one feeling that the bad guys got away with a lot more than murder.

And how did Larry Wolfe manage to drive from Cochise County to Hudspeth County Texas in something like 2 hours? Just to drive from Gallup NM to Albuquerque takes something like 4 hrs, and that's only half across NM.

Joanna's stepfather just ups and quits on her right after Frank Montoya tells her he's in for Chief of Sierra Vista- and she's down a deputy due to the death of the rookie! What will she do, hire Dick Voland back to be Chief Deputy? I don't think so. The entire shtick with Eleanor made zero sense (when did Eleanor ever?), but to wrap it up with George quitting and Eleanor and George motoring off, towing a Mazda Miata to Minnesota (at $4.50 a gal for gas) made me wonder if Jance is losing her zest for Joanna and wants to write more Ali Reynold dreck.

Maybe that's what happens when authors leave too much time elapse between books in a series. The Joanna Brady series is one of my favorites. Let's hope for resolution in the next installment and hopefully, that will come soon.

Read All Book Reviews of "Damage Control Joanna Brady Bk 13"