Outlaw Mountain
Written by J. A. Jance
Narrated by C. J. Critt
4/5
()
About this audiobook
Alice Rogers, an elderly widow, is dead, found murdered in the Arizona desert. It's easy enough to pin the killing on the teens caught driving her car across the Mexican border, but Sheriff Brady isn't about to let it go at that. Alice was something of a free spirit, with a penchant for Scotch, the glitter of Las Vegas, and a romance with a man twenty years her junior. Her hot-tempered daughter Susan suspects Mom's boyfriend—her former handyman who moved in instead of moving on when he finished his handy work. Now Susan's furious at her brother Clete, the do-nothing mayor of Tombstone, blaming him for not protecting their inheritance by breaking up their mother's winter romance.
Yet all is not as it appears to be, and Joanna is forced to put her personal life on hold to dig deeper into Alice's death, the lives of her greedy offspring, and the identity of her mysterious gentleman friend. And as the investigation gets sidetracked by ugly local land disputes, it takes some troublesome twists and turns, until Sheriff Brady finds herself wading through a murky morass of graft and corruption that may have given someone reason to kill—and kill again.
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, six thrillers about the Walker Family, and one volume of poetry. Born in South Dakota and brought up in Bisbee, Arizona, she lives with her husband in Seattle, Washington.
More audiobooks from J. A. Jance
Stand Down: A J.P. Beaumont Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Edge of Evil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Still Dead: A J.P. Beaumont Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Blue Line: A Joanna Brady Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ring In the Dead: A J. P. Beaumont Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Random Acts: A Joanna Brady and Ali Reynolds Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blessing of the Lost Girls: A Brady and Walker Family Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5After the Fire: A Memoir in Poetry and Prose Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Edge of Evil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5MatchUp Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Birds of Prey: A J. P. Beaumont Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Moving Target: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Outlaw Mountain
Titles in the series (17)
Desert Heat Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shoot Don't Shoot Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tombstone Courage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rattlesnake Crossing: A Joanna Brady Mystery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Skeleton Canyon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dead to Rights Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Outlaw Mountain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Paradise Lost Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Damage Control Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dead Wrong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Devil's Claw Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Remains of Innocence: A Brady Novel of Suspense Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dead Wrong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Judgment Call: A Brady Novel of Suspense Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Downfall: A Brady Novel of Suspense Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Downfall + Random Acts: A Brady Novel of Suspense Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Missing and Endangered: A Brady Novel of Suspense Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related audiobooks
Skeleton Canyon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Devil's Claw Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rattlesnake Crossing: A Joanna Brady Mystery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shoot Don't Shoot Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dead to Rights Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tombstone Courage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Paradise Lost Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dead Wrong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Desert Heat Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Damage Control Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Judgment Call: A Brady Novel of Suspense Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hand of Evil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Web of Evil: A Novel of Suspense Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cold Betrayal: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Remains of Innocence: A Brady Novel of Suspense Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Moving Target: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Man Overboard: An Ali Reynolds Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cruel Intent: A Novel of Suspense Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Honor Among Thieves: An Ali Reynolds Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Deadly Stakes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fatal Error: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Duel to the Death Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fire and Ice Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Clawback: An Ali Reynolds Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Left for Dead: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Last Goodbye Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Second Watch: A J. P. Beaumont Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The A List Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Justice Denied Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kiss of the Bees Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Mystery For You
The Complete Sherlock Holmes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5And Then There Were None Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silence of the Lambs: 25th Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Perfume: The Story of a Murderer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Did I Kill You?: A Thriller Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When No One Is Watching: A Thriller Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Listen for the Lie: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mother-Daughter Murder Night: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Woman in the Library, The Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What Lies in the Woods: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Murder on the Orient Express: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The River We Remember: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Extraordinary Impossible Crimes and Puzzling Deaths: The Best New Original Stories of the Genre Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hit and Run Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hallowe'en Party: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tell No One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Tender Land Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Altered Carbon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Murder of Roger Ackroyd: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Unexpected Guest Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heaven’s Crooked Finger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Word is Murder: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Crooked House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Still Life: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Death on the Nile: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ordinary Grace Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Outlaw Mountain
160 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5If there was an easy straight-forward answer to the guilty party we wouldn’t have much of a story. But as with all of the books in this series, the path to the truth leads Sheriff Joanna Brady and her understaffed/overworked department in a number of directions and it’s interesting to see how the various threads get us there. This is made more difficult as the know-it-all newly elected Sheriff of Pima County doesn’t want to cooperate with Cochise County’s Sheriff’s department regarding the death of a woman found in the desert.There are two major threads to this story. The first involves the murder of Alice and we’re along for her experience as she dies. Her son and daughter actually add an element of entertainment to the story as these two people believe they have the right to throw their weight and opinions around. It also provides an element of danger to Joanna.The other thread is more compassionate and through it we actually learn how good-hearted and patient Butch and Jenny are when a mentally-challenged man in his fifties, Junior, is abandoned by his caregivers at an art fair and Joanna doesn’t know where to take him while looking for his guardians.What I love about this series is not only the police procedures and how and why Joanna makes the decisions she does, but her home life is challenging as well. Her relationship with her young daughter is made difficult with her hours and sudden calls out to crime scenes, and she’s relying more heavily on Butch for help with that. She also needs to face her relationship with him. The various characters and relationships are what really give this series life. Every one of them feels real and three-dimensional, no one is perfect, and we’re always learning more about them.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Jance is also the author of the J. P. Beaumont series, one that I like a lot. This is the first I have read of her Sheriff Joanna Brady series of novels that take place in Cochise County, Arizona. Apparently, in a preceding book, Jance explains how Joanna became sheriff, stepping into the role following the death of her husband, who had been sheriff until he was killed.
An elderly woman, Alice Rogers, is discovered dead, covered with vicious cholla cactus spines. In her hands is clutched a vial of insulin, yet she was not diabetic. She was a wealthy woman, and the clues seem to point to a mysterious gardener and handyman who has disappeared, leaving behind no fingerprints in his house. Alice’s grown children, Cletus, the mayor of Tombstone, and Sally, both had motives. Alice had a large estate, and both were in need of money. The plot begins to get confusing, and the book takes on more the feel of a police procedural as eco-terrorists attack a local subdivision construction site, a Tuscon woman is discovered collecting rattlesnakes whose home range the subdivision is destroying, Joanna’s chief deputy for operations gets drunk and resigns in despair over her engagement to a local writer, a substantial heroin ring is uncovered, and fingerprints of the missing gardener match those of a dead policeman who had been working on a corruption case near Las Vegas. Someone has also dumped off a retarded teenager at the local Catholic church bazaar, and Joanna has to try to locate the parents or guardians. Not to mention that Joanna, a single parent, has to deal with her precocious eleven-year-old and her interfering and obnoxious mother.
She’s a tough character dealing with the bad guys and manages to get herself out of some difficult situations -- I do wish the author had dressed her in something more practical than a skirt and pantyhose. It seems some kind of uniform would have been more realistic given herhands-on involvement. Everyone in the small town of Brisbee seems to be rather untrustworthy, and I hope they have a big jail at the rate the dead bodies and crooks are piling up.
It’s a good story, but I think I prefer the Beaumont series. Joanna seems to lack some common sense that other characters have, and some of her fears regarding her relationship with the former in-laws are just silly. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a series I've enjoyed since it began, although I have not been reading them in any particular order. In this one, Joanna Brady, sheriff of Cochise County is called upon to investigate and help solve the mystery surrounding the death of an elderly woman whose body is found impaled on hundreds of cactus spines. At first, it appears that the old lady, who was known to drink more than a few at a time, may have just gotten lost driving in the desert while drunk, left her car in the middle of the night, slipped, fallen and lost the battle to the giant cactus.Although the death doesn't occur inside her jurisdiction, there are several other factors that involve Cochise County officials, and Sheriff Brady begins to suspect murder. There are several likely villains in this one, and more appearances by Joanna's other family members. In addition, the side story of "Junior" the lost man-child found abandoned at the local church, and who somehow ends up in Joanna's temporary custody, adds a strong sense of family, caring, and humanity that makes this series one I keep returning to.If you haven't tried any of these, I'd recommend grabbing one the next time they pop up. I haven't found it necessary to read them in order, so start anyplace you want to.