Settings & Atmosphere - Fiction, Women Detectives - Fiction, Police Stories

Skeleton Canyon

Name: Skeleton Canyon
Author: J. A. Jance
ISBN: 9780061998959

by J. A. Jance

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Overview

It was love that brought young Brianna "Bree" O'Brien to Skeleton Canyon for a romantic tryst with her adoring boyfriend, Ignacio Ybarra - a rendezvous the beautiful teenager would never live to experience. It was love also that compelled Joanna Brady to seek - and win - the office of Cochise Country Sheriff: love of her murdered policeman husband, whose memory she was honoring; of her little daughter Jenny, for whom she was now solely responsible; and for justice and truth. It is the truth about that terrible night in Skeleton Canyon - a night that witnessed the cruel death of an innocent girl - that now concerns Joanna, even as she struggles to come to terms with her own enduring grief and loneliness. Bree's distraught parents are convinced Ignacio is the killer - that the boy was enraged by their refusal to condone his relationship with their daughter. But the sudden disappearance of a friend - combined with startling revelations gleaned from a chance encounter - suggests to Sheriff Brady that there is much more involved in this case than passionate anger and forbidden love. And her investigation is beginning to expose a complex web of crime and deception that stretches from an isolated desert canyon to the luxurious O'Brien family compound, Sombra del San Jose. For nothing is exactly as it seems in either locality. And Joanna is suddenly in danger of discovering first-hand that lies, both criminal and seemingly innocent alike, can have devastating - and deadly - consequences.

About the Author, J. A. Jance

J. A. Jance is the New York Times bestselling author of the J. P. Beaumont series, the Joanna Brady series, the Ali Reynolds series, and four interrelated thrillers about the Walker family. Born in South Dakota and brought up in Bisbee, Arizona, Jance lives with her husband in Seattle, Washington, and Tucson, Arizona.

Biography

Considering J. A. Jance's now impressive career -- which includes two massively popular mystery series and status as a New York Times bestseller -- it may be difficult to believe that she was initially strongly discouraged from literary pursuits. A chauvinistic creative writing professor advised her to seek out a more "ladylike" job, such as nurse or schoolteacher. Moreover, her alcoholic husband (a failed Faulkner wannabe) assured her there was room in the family for only one writer, and he was it. Determined to make her doomed marriage work, Jance put her writing on the back burner. But while her husband slept, she penned the visceral poems that would eventually be collected in After the Fire.

Jance next chose to use her hard times in a more unlikely manner. Encouraged by an editor to try writing fiction after a failed attempt at a true-crime book, she created J. P. Beaumont, a homicide detective with a taste for booze. Beaumont's drinking problem was clearly linked to Jance's dreadful experiences with her first husband; but, as she explains it: "Beaumont was smart enough to sober up, once the problem was brought to his attention. My husband, on the other hand, died of chronic alcoholism at age 42." So, from misfortune grew one of the most popular characters in modern mystery fiction. Beaumont debuted in 1985's Until Proven Guilty -- and, after years of postponing her writing career, Jance was on her way.

As a sort of light flipside to the dark Beaumont, Jance created her second series in 1991. Inspired by the writer's happier role as a mom, plucky small-town sheriff Joanna Brady was introduced in Desert Heat and struck an immediate chord with readers. In 2005, Jance added a third story sequence to her repertoire with Edge of Evil, featuring Ali Reynolds, a former TV reporter-turned-professional blogger.

And so, the adventures continue! A career such as Jance's would be extraordinary under any circumstances, but considering the obstacles she overcame to become a bestselling, critically acclaimed novelist, her tale is all the more compelling. As she explains it: "One of the wonderful things about being a writer is that everything -- even the bad stuff -- is usable."

Good To Know

Geographically speaking, Jance is equal parts J. P. Beaumont and Joanna Brady. She splits her time between Beaumont's big-city home of Seattle and Brady's desert residence of Arizona.

Before her writing career become truly lucrative, Jance made little more than "fun money" off her books, and on her web site, she wryly recalls "the Improbable Cause trip to Walt Disney World; the Minor in Possession memorial powder room; the Payment in Kind memorial hot tub."

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Editorials

Cherie Jung

Personally, I have never read a Jance book that I didn't like....I think she is such an outstanding storyteller that I would read cereal box panels if she were writing them....[T]his book stands alone. You can start with Skeleton Canyon now and then go back to the others [in the series].
— Mystery Magazine Online

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's 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. (Aug.) FYI: Skeleton Canyon will be simultaneously published with the mass market reprint of Dead to Rights.

Library Journal

Joanna Brady, sheriff of Tombstone and star of Jance's award-winning mystery series, is summoned to the murderously hot Skeleton Canyon to investigate a killing.

Cherie Jung

Kirkus Reviews

A year after they played Romeo and Juliet at summer camp, recent Bisbee High grads Brianna O'Brien and Ignacio Ybarra are at it again, this time for real. Nacio's aunt and uncle think the secret romance is a bad idea, but their disapproval is nothing compared to wealthy, crippled rancher David O'Brien's racist roars of outrage—outrage he directs unabated at Cochise County Sheriff Joanna Brady (Dead to Rights, 1996, etc.) when Bree goes missing from the cozy campsite where she'd been waiting au naturel for Nacio. Even the dullest reader will have surmised that Bree is dead, but Jance keeps this revelation from Joanna and her overworked deputies for nearly half the running time of this overextended tale, leaving only the second half for Joanna's tangle with a black-market Freon dealer; her ever-surprising mother's latest bombshell; the romantic misunderstanding between former prostitute Angie Kellogg and bird-loving naturalist Dennis Hacker; the skeletons tumbling out of the O'Brien family closet; and, almost as an afterthought, Bree's murder (which turns out to have been committed by the Arizona version of the wandering tramp so beloved of country-house whodunits).

Most of the sitcom-shaped intrigues are so lightweight that the homicidal complications seem to have been airlifted in from Jance's tougher, stronger J.P. Beaumont series