Lynda C. (Readnmachine) reviewed on 6/29/2019 + 1444 more book reviews

Sleepy Santa Cruz County Arizona has suddenly broken out in mayhem. A small-time pimp is found dead in his car. A border patrol officer discovers a teenage girl, savagely beaten and left to die in the remote desert. A young county cop is shot down in a routine traffic stop gone awry. And that's just the beginning of the body count in what turns out â even with all the violence â to be a tepid and overplotted mystery-without-mystery and suspense-without-suspense novel.

J.A. Jance is a prolific writer of crime novels, with her Joanna Brady series arguably the best of the bunch. But she may be spreading herself too thin with the Ali Reynolds books in addition to the J.P. Beaumont and Walker family mystery series.

Reynolds is essentially just a marginal figure here as various friends and acquaintances try to figure out why the injured policeman is being painted as a cop gone bad, and how to keep the beating victim alive long enough to identify her assailant. Most of the law enforcement figures in the book are painted as either crooked, lazy, or dim, and of course it's up to Reynolds and the other characters (mostly the other characters) to unravel the tangle.

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