Dieser Beitrag enthält Werbung – advertising.
Seated off to Ken Galloway’s right, Sheriff Joanna Brady steeled herself for what she knew would come next. She folded her hands in her lap, plastered a faint and entirely fake smile on her face, and willed her ears not to turn red. This far into the campaign she should have been used to her opponent’s constant references to what he described as her “delicate condition”. Joanna should have been accustomed to it, but she wasn’t. The subject still rankled her every time Ken Jr. brought it up. She resented his constantly drawing attention to her growing belly and casually discussing her pregnancy again and again as though she were nothing more than an obliging live-action mannequin in some high school sex-ed classroom.
“The point is,” Ken continued, “when my brothers and I were little, our mother stayed home and took care of us.” … … …
In the back of the room a woman, applauding furiously, rose to her feet. “That’s right, Ken! Way to go!” Eleanor Lathrop Winfield shouted. “You tell her.”
Joanna’s mother’s enthusiastic outburst was enough to propel Joanna out of her dream. She awakened panting and sweating, but the dream stayed with her for several minutes. … … …
The election itself was now a full three months in the past. Joanna had managed to eke out a narrow 587-vote victory, so she should have been over the campaign nightmares, but she wasn’t. Night after night, in some variations of that same dream, she was perpetually running for office, and night after night her mother’s continuing disapproval was always with her.
from: Dead Wrong
A Sheriff and the Private Life
Joanna Brady is the happy wife of a police officer in Bisbee, Arizona. They have a daughter, 9 years old. Her husband is busy working to get ahead and runs for the Sheriff’s office in Cochise County. Then he is killed, shot – and dirty laundry is washed in public – not only there are rumors about her husband, but also Joanna is said to be involved. It smells like bribery, drug deals …
Joanna is devastated, but not defeated. She knows for sure that her husband never did any monkey business. Also she herself never was involved in anything illegal. So she meets actively her fate and starts investigating about the death of her husband. Also she decided to run for the Sheriff’s office instead of him.
In short: Joanna is successful. She wins the election and solves the case of murder of her husband.
So now she is Sheriff of Cochise County in the south of Arizona and a single mom. Although familiar with the job of a Sheriff, because her father was Sheriff for long years, she has to adjust to administration and processes … Also she decides to do her time at the police academy to get a solid background concerning police work and investigation as well as interrogation techniques. She masters everything. She masters also the male hierarchy in the police system, all the prejudices, all the mean pitfalls. Rather soon she becomes a respected Sheriff. (All the gossip about her only a representative figure on top of the hierarchy in Cochise county, a woman not able to roll up her sleeves and get to work is proved wrong by her active interaction when there are crucial cases.)
Although deep in the south of Arizona with a lot of desert around in a sparsely populated region there are crimes, brutal crimes. The are too many weapons around, too many gangs … also there are families with family secrets, maybe some decades old, but nevertheless worth any possible action of defense up to some killing – of course from the point of the family. Surrounded by a desert area often there isn’t any challenge to get rid of corpses which might only be found by chance … years later … Also the social layers of society with all their downfalls creating scenes of alcohol and drug misuse, splitting families and leaving alone lost juveniles ensure that there is an everyday load of crime which may explode into disasters.
Joanna gets involved in quite a lot of evil business, not only by professional criminals and decent fellow citizens, but also by needy families. Even some serial killers are active … She masters all her challenges, if in the field, if behind her desk, managing her staff and the always growing paper load of administration – as well as the male world of police and prosecution. There is a re-election after four years in office … and another one …
Her private life develops slowly. After the killing of her husband she is alone, but then she mets a new partner, who is enthusiastic about backing her and looking after all the daily challenges. There is a wedding. Her partner puts into practice his dream of becoming a writer of crime novels – and he is successful on all fronts.
Her daughter will get siblings … She is finally in college … facing her own challenges. Joanna always watches over her and her younger children – especially when sometimes a wave of crime is on the verge of touching her family. Don’t forget that being a sheriff is a full-time job, often more than eight hours per weekday and a free weekend!
The novels not only describe the crime and the investigation, but also Joanna’s life from day to day resp. night to night. Joanna is devoted to her job as well as she is devoted to her family and her friends. She struggles hard to balance her life.
There is Joanna’s permanent war with her mother. Joanna’s mother isn’t so enthusiastic about her daughter becoming the sheriff of Cochise county. Her husband, Joanna’s father, was sheriff and was killed – at first it seems to be an road accident, but years later Joanna throws light on the scene, realizes that her father was killed and locates the murderer and the disastrous crime plot in the background. Along the way she also learns that her father wasn’t a saint – he had a love affair when he died. Also she learn that she’s got a brother … her mother wasn’t courageous enough not to put him up for adoption, although she married his father later.
… and there’s more family stuff … Joanna’s plate is loaded.
During the years Joanna succeeds in establishing a team in her administrative unit whose members are intelligent and able. Joanna may rely on them anytime – at least on most of them. There is always the male dominance, if in the background and weaker during the years … However, nobody is perfect.
In short: It’s an exciting and challenging task to be a sheriff in the south of Arizona – and there is more than enough crime for suspense-packed novels.