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DEVIL'S CLAW
by J. A. Jance
Avon, July 2001
$7.50
ISBN: 0380792494


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

A 15 year old girl goes missing. She's been living with her grandmother since her mother's incarceration for manslaughter 8 years earlier. Lucy Ridder's only friend is a red-tailed hawk she found as a nestling and raised. But her mother is being released from prison. Lucy's dream has been that her mother would die in prison so she would never have to see her father's confessed murderer again. She takes her hawk and her bicycle and some camping gear and goes to the park where her mother had hidden something before she left for prison. That something, a computer diskette, is in her backpack. She sees a man shoot her mother and put Sandra into a car. Lucy tries to disappear,

Meanwhile, at home, Sheriff Joanna Brady's 11 year old Jennifer Ann, points out that one of the dogs is drinking from the toilet. Joanna finds that his water dish is empty, as is the food bowl. When she goes to check the stock, she finds that they haven't been cared for either. She takes care of the animals and then goes to her neighbor's house to find out why 85 year old Clayton Rhodes didn't do the chores for her. She finds him dead, slumped over the wheel in a closed garage.

It's a week and a day until Joanna's wedding to Butch Dixon. She doesn't need all this trauma. And when the body of a murder victim is found, she knows that she better get busy or the wedding her mother has been planning will have to be postponed and she doesn't want to mess with her mother.

This is the 8th in the series set it Cochise County Arizona. Jance has made Brady a responsible mother and law officer. The desert is part of the story. The secondary characters are as well developed as the main one. These can be read as stand alone novels, or, if you prefer, start with DESERT HEAT (1993) and work your way through the series to DEVIL'S CLAW and then read the two novels (PARADISE LOST, and PARTNER IN CRIME) which have appeared since.

Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, December 2002

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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