Desert Heat

By: J. A. Jance

Narrated by: Hillary Huber

Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

A cop lies dying beneath the blistering Arizona sun - a local lawman who may well have become the next sheriff of Cochise County. The police brass claim that Andy Brady was dirty, and that his shooting was a suicide attempt. Joanna Brady, his devoted wife and mother of their nine-year-old daughter, knows a cover-up when she hears one...and murder when she sees it.

But her determined efforts to hunt down an assassin and clear her husband's name are placing Joanna and her surviving family in harm's way - because in the desert, the one thing more lethal than a rattler's bite...is the truth.

©1993 J. A. Jance (P)2009 HarperCollins Publishers

Loves it!

I think a narrator can make or break an audiobook. This is my first time listening to this narrator and I thought she was wonderful. The story is well written. It’s my kind of series.

First in Line

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

It was mildly entertaining. I was glad to listen to the first in the series and finally understand why the lady became sheriff. The series books I've read and listened to in the past are about the same; mildly entertaining, fairly predictable and just enough of a story to keep you listening.

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

Glad to finally get the answers since I've read them out of order!

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

The narrator was good and put a good twist on each character.

Did Desert Heat inspire you to do anything?

Not to run for sheriff!

Great read

Another great book by JA Jance. I’ll definitely go through this series as well. Beaumont is behind me and Joanna ahead.

woman of courage

I real enjoyed this book. It captured my imagination...I liked the flow of the story.

Joanna Brady

I read this series years ago, and now I’m going to listen to them all again. I love J. A. Janie!

I enjoyed it.

I enjoyed this book. Definitely not an action book or a real police procedural, but not a bad read either.

Took me home

Living in Arizona as well as Guaymas. I enjoyed the references to the areas. I also love crime dramas so this story really filled the bill. Looking forward to the next edition.

How happy was that??!!

Finding a Joanna Brady book I hadn't read? Wow. And the first one -- really? How did I miss it? But what a happy thing I had missed it -- got to listen to it now for the first time.

I love this series -- I appreciate the whole crowd, not just Joanna, but Jenny (called more formally "Jennifer" in this first book) who's nine years old here, Marianne the minister, Joanna's viper-tongued mother, who reminds me so much of one of my female relatives I listed to those parts over and over, laughing every time. Boy, Miz Jance nails these nasty-mother characters just perfectly. We even meet both dogs, and learn how Tigger came into the family.

And it's here we meet the sadder but wiser Annie Kellogg, too, who plays a big part in several subsequent books. I hadn't realized she'd been there from the start, even her love for birds is shown here. Who knew?

It was fun to see where it all started. And interesting, too, because Jance is unique among authors who have written as many books as she has: this first book and the last ones are equally good. Joanna and the whole crowd age, they go through normal life cycles, but Jance never seems to run out of unique material to occupy them all.

That's unusual. The norm is -- or seems to be -- that after a few books in a series, authors either start to fade away, losing interest in their own characters. Or they struggle to find new situations to mess around with, getting more and more extreme, to the point the books are just no longer interesting. Some authors get better, of course -- like John Sandford. His early Luke Davenport books are very different -- Luke in the beginning is an angry, violent guy, and only over time does he get to be the wisecracking hero, still just as creative and brave, but without the hard edge of anger displayed in the first books. But Joanna? She doesn't change. She's just as smart, dedicated, honest, brave and interesting in the last books as she was in the first.

But now I have indeed read them all. Nothing to do now but wait for new ones!

Hot!

I read this book when it first came out in the early 90s, and found it intense and fast-moving. Listening to it seemed to make it more so! Hearing about Joanna's reaction to sudden widow-hood nearly brought me to tears. What a strong woman!

Can't wait for my next Brady series novel!

I really enjoyed this. Easy listen, good characters, nice visuals and a good mystery that I didn't figure out on page 6.