Jance brings together two of her main characters. Eh...not my favorite. I've not read any of the J.P. Beaumont books, and this doesn't encourage me to start; there's just nothing about him that I find all that interesting. The puzzle as usual makes it easy to spot the murderer, it's just a question of how law enforcement will get there in the end. I didn't guess who was the source of the leak, though. I did like the murderer's method, that was unusual and there's an interesting afterword by the author about it. After reading 10 in the series I'm thinking it's time for Brady to stop having difficulties based on her gender. Also getting tired of the whininess between her and Butch. He needs to stop bitching that she doesn't show up on time, and she needs to get a watch with an alarm (apparently cell phones don't do anything yet except call people in this timeline). Brady is really turning into a person you would not want to be around. And the last thing - WTH was that at the end with Brady and Beaumont? That was just squicky, and I really wish Jance hadn't gone there.
This brought both of my favorite series together. Even if it was for only one book. Jance did a wonderful job of keeping her characters true to her other books of them and finds a way of making them work together. They're both stubborn, and set in their ways of doing things. Beau is very clever and finds his own way around town while Joanna and her department wishes he'd just leave. They say opposites attract....
the dead woman was an artist recently arrived from washington st cruelly cut down in the early stages of a promising career now all that remains of Rochelle Baxter lies on a cold slab in the Cochise County morgue and sheriff joanna brady knows that murder has once again infected her small desert community but there is more to this homicide than initially meets the eye and more to the victim who died while supposedly under the conscientious protection of the goverment.
