Devils Claw (Joanna Brady, #8)

A missing teenager and an octogenarian found dead of apparently natural causes are pretty run-of-the-mill cases in Bisbee, Arizona, where Sheriff Joanna Brady is focusing on the last-minute details of her upcoming wedding. In this latest outing in Judith Jances Brady series, the connection between the two events is a thin one. In the authors capable hands, however, its enough to drive this well-plotted mystery to a credible conclusion.
Fifteen-year-old Lucy Ridder dreads her mothers release from prison, eight years after she was convicted of killing Lucys beloved father. Lucy is aware that her mothers priority is not a family reunion but the retrieval of a mysterious diskette entrusted to Lucy by her dad shortly before his death. After inadvertently witnessing her mothers brutal slaying by a stranger whos also hot after the diskette, Lucy vanishes. It takes most of the novel for Joanna to figure out that Lucys disappearance is tied to her mothers murder, and for good reasons. Besides the distraction of her pending nuptials, the sheriff has been accused of killing her elderly, beloved neighbor for financial gain. Because the reader knows the truth of both situations very early in the game, Joannas delayed awareness doesnt pack as much wallop as it might. The greater mystery is whether shell strangle her wedding-obsessed mother before she and her too-good-to-be-true fianc?? make it to the altar.?ÿ–Jane Adams