Shoot Don’t Shoot by J.A. Jance

Reviewed by Julie M. Moderson

I didn’t know this was a book series and I didn’t feel I missed out on anything but I am going to go read the rest of the books.

Joanna Brady is the newly elected sheriff for the city of Bisbee, Arizona. Joanna’s husband was a police officer and he was shot in the line of duty in September and it is now November just a week before Thanksgiving and Joanna is in Phoenix Arizona training at the police academy. (This is the part that I just don’t get.) I can’t
imagine if anyone’s husband were to die in September they would campaign for sheriff immediately after the funeral. Why not say he died in June - that way it would seem more likely. Joanna has no police experience other than her father and her deceased husband were cops on Bisbee’s police department.

Joanna is doing a favor for a friend when she visits Jorge Grijalva who has been arrested for the murder of his ex-wife. Joanna quickly believes that he is an innocent man and feels she needs to find the real killer. Joanna has great instincts in solving crimes and is learning how to investigate crimes at the academy. Her new skills are put to the test - you can feel her thinking and figuring out what to do next.

Jance does a good job of explaining what goes on in a police academy and it helps make the story flow. She gives us some hints that apparently Joanna just doesn’t get but she keeps us guessing who the serial killer is.

Her family comes to Phoenix for Thanksgiving. When she takes her daughter to see the Police Academy, she finds out that her new friend at the academy has been seriously injured by someone and also finds out some secrets about the academy. She goes searching on her own in Phoenix and ends up putting her own daughter in harms way.

I was worried when Joanna seemed to think romantically about the bartender Butch Dixon that Jance would make them a couple when Joanna’s husband was only dead 2½ months but she held back and hopefully that will be in another one of her books. Butch is a person that I would like to see more of in future books. This was an
excellent book.