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

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!

A great beginning to a terrific series

This series is one of my favorites, and Jance has done a terrific job of introducing Joanna Brady and her friends and family. The book description above is good, so I won't rehash it here. The characters are great, the situation is believable and I highly recommend this book. Ms Huber isn't a great narrator, with a limited range of different voices, but she doesn't make mistakes or have annoying quirks.

Sadly, several of the next few books in the series are available only in abridged format, and you'll want to skip those.

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!

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!

Great Book!!

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes, since it was recommended to me I feel like I should continue!! I thoroughly enjoyed this book and look forward to the rest in this series!

Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?

Pretty much! It definitely kept me guessing!

Meet Joanna Brady

I really like J. A. Jance. I enjoy her stories and I like the style she uses to tell them. Of the 3 main series that Jance wrights I like Joanna Brady the most although I like her other series as well. The biggest short coming of this book is that it's to short. That's not to say that Jance didn't tell the entire story in this book because she did its just that I would have enjoyed a 16 hour book for twice as long as I enjoyed an 8 hour book. Still in all the main purpose of this book was to launch the Joanna Brady series and this book does accomplish that.

Hang in there gets better

The story is good. The narration starts out sounding like a robot but ends up good.

I love the Joanna Brady series thus far.

I like the family element of the series. In Desert Heat specifically, you have a woman who doesn't know how how strong she is until her inner strength is put to the test by the murder of her husband, leaving he a single parent. She's discovering who she can count on and to what extent.

Not what I expected

The story started slow and stayed slow through chapter 12. Too much narration and not enough dialogue, which might have been a good thing since the narrators was not good for this book. Her pitch and tone didn't impart any sense of danger or excitement into the story. The portrayal of Jenny was not realistic at all. The story could have been good if the plot were developed better.

Not a Sue Graffton ...but very well written.

I did feel for the young widow, and said go baby, go!

Worth reading. The narrator spoke well for each part.