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Jance produces a readable story
Book Review
By Derryll White
Jance, J.A. (1995). Shoot Don’t Shoot.
This novel came early in J.A. Jance’s Joanne Brady series of more than 20 novels. She is just developing Brady’s character. She makes her vulnerable but resilient, intuitive – a single parent with a tough job, Sheriff of Cochise County.
Jance is artful in the way she constructs the story. Most ‘serial killer’ novels focus on the killer – his ego, his building desires, etc. Jance puts all that away and brings Sheriff Brady and her family to the fore. At some points the reader may feel a slide into the romance novel genre, but J.A. Jance pulls the story back into action/mystery mode.
The cover reviews pump Jance as perhaps the best mystery writer today. That would be exceedingly presumptuous, but she does deliver a readable story. Having said that, she doesn’t come near to the top of my list of good reads.
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Excerpts from the novel:
BIG MOUTH – He was still holding the card as Joanne walked away. If nothing else, the experience would give him something to think about the next time he tried to pick up a lone woman minding her own business in a truck stop.
CHANGE – …when he was a little kid growing up in Phoenix, it was still possible to see thousands of stars if you went outside in the yard at night. Some of his favorite memories stemmed from that time, standing in the front yard with his folks, staring up in the darkness, trying to catch a glimpse of the newly launched sputnik as it shot across the sky. Now the haze of smog and hundreds of thousands of city lights obscured all but the brightest two or three stars.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE – “Domestic violence was once thought to be limited to lower class households. Increasingly, however, authorities are finding that domestic violence is a crime that crosses all racial and economic lines. Victims and perpetrators alike come from all walks of life and all educational levels.”
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
