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Dramatis personae: Joanna Brady, Sheriff of Cochise County; Junior Dowdle, a man with mental disabilities; Guy Matchett, the new Cochise County medical examiner that no one likes; Rebecca Nolan, an alcoholic mother; Lucas and Ruth, her twin children. Across the country, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Liza Matchett, a waitress, Selma Matchett, her abusive mother; Candy Small, a diner owner with a heart of gold.
In Cochise County, Junior Dowdle has gone missing. Joanna and many members of the community have gathered at the church to begin a search for the mentally disabled man. Helping with the search are Rebecca Nolan, an alcoholic woman relatively new to the area, and her twin children. The searchers find Junior in a cave, and with him is a kitten who has been tortured. Later, when the county medical examiner is called to autopsy a body, he does not show up at the scheduled time, and another search for another missing person begins. As the scenario unfolds, Jance's usual strategy—to create layers of incidents around a theme - becomes clear. The fragility of the lives and health of the mentally disabled, the animals who depend on us, and Rebecca Nolan's children are revealed.
In Massachusetts, another scene is unfolding. Liza Matchett's abusive mother dies, and she must bury the body that gave her birth but withheld love. We learn that Liza's father went missing early in her childhood and that Liza's subsistence job as a waitress offers her the only safety and family she has known - her co-workers and her boss, Candy Small, are a caring and giving bunch. As she cleans out her mother's home, she discovers cash that her mother had hoarded and withheld from her daughter. Later, at the funeral, a strange man tells Liza that he knew her father; he drove a bread delivery van. Candy Small realizes that Liza's father had been running drugs in the van and that Liza is in the gunsights of some very dangerous people. He arranges for Liza to get safely out of town and head for her brother's home in Cochise County just as people who knew Liza in Great Barrington and helped her begin dying in terrible and grizzly scenes of torture.
The threads of the novel are spun together masterfully as J.A. Jance unravels a particularly intricate tale of greed and disregard for love and life.
§ Cathy Downs is professor of English at Texas A&M University-Kingsville and a fan of the well-turned whodunit.
Reviewed by Cathy Downs, September 2014
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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