I had written ten books through a middle-aged male detective’s point of view. It seemed to me that it would be fun to write about a woman for a change. Because Beau was a Seattle homicide detective, most of the books took place in and around Seattle. Up to that time, I had spent the bulk of my life living in Arizona. And it seemed like it would be fun to use some of the desert stuff that was percolating in the back of my head.
In many of the books I’d read that featured female sleuths, I had found that the characters seemed to live isolated, solitary lives with maybe a cat and a single dying ficus for company. Most of the women I knew lived complicated lives that involved husbands and children, in-laws and friends. They juggled family responsibilities and jobs along with church and community service. I set out to make my character, Joanna Brady (Yes, yes, I know. Another J. B. name) into someone whose life would reflect that complicated act of juggling.
As a writer, I try not to be too buoyed by good reviews or too devastated by bad ones, but there was one review that came in on the Joanna Brady books that is still engraved on my heart. It came for Mostly Murder: “Every woman in America is obviously not a sheriff, but Joanna Brady is every woman.”
Thank you, Mostly Murder.
Joanna Brady to the Rescue
My elderly and increasingly frail parents still lived in Bisbee, Arizona when I wrote this. When the need for a helipad at the local hospital became critical, they, as members of the local Kiwanis Club, began trying to raise money to build one. Hearing of the helipad project, I offered to help by doing a local appearance and book signing. It was soon clear, however, that book signings and bake sales weren’t going to cut it when it came to raising the required $104,000 inside a two-year deadline.
Remembering how one person, Marc Alley of Seattle, had made a $10,000 donation to the YWCA for an appearance as a character in Breach of Duty, I offered to do the same thing for the helipad project in the next Joanna Brady book, Devil’s Claw. My mother was quick to point out, however, that the economic situation in Bisbee was far different from that of Seattle, so I offered people a spot in the book if they made a $1000 donation to the project. Twelve people signed up, and they’re all in this book, under their own names and doing things that are in keeping with their real lives.
As for the helipad: Phelps Dodge Corporation came through and offered to complete the project for $70,000 less than had been bid originally. And so, if you’re ever in Bisbee, Arizona, and have need of an emergency air-evacuation, you can thank Joanna Brady for being part of the process.
Here’s a glimpse of J.A. Jance’s next thrilling
Novel of Suspense
PARADISE LOST
Available September 2001
in hardcover from William Morrow
It was late on a hot and sunny Friday afternoon as the four-vehicle caravan turned off Highway 186 and took the dirt road that led to Apache Pass. In the lead was a small blue Isuzu Tracker followed by two dusty minivans. A lumbering thirty-five-foot Winnebago Adventurer brought up the rear.
Sitting at the right rear window in the second of the two minivans, twelve-year-old Jennifer Ann Brady was sulking. As far as she was concerned, if you had to bring a motor home complete with a traveling bathroom along on a camping trip, you weren’t really camping. When she and her father, Andrew Roy Brady, had gone camping those few times before he died, they had taken bedrolls and backpacks and hiked into the wilderness. On those occasions, she and her Dad had pitched their tent and put down their bedrolls more than a mile from where they had left his truck. Andy Brady had taught his daughter the finer points of digging a trench for bathroom purposes. Jenny’s new scout leader, Mrs. Lambert, didn’t seem like the type who would be caught dead digging a trench much less using one.
The Tracker was occupied by the two women Mrs. Lambert had introduced as council-paid interns, both of them former Girl Scouts and now History Majors at the University of Arizona. Because the assistant leader, Mrs. Loper was unavailable, they were to help Mrs. Lambert with chaperone duties. In addition, they would be delivering informal lectures on the lifestyle of the Chiricahua Apache as well as on the history and aftermath of Apache Wars in Arizona.