Sheriff Joanna Brady must solve two perplexing cases that may be tied together in New York Times bestselling author J. A. Jance's thrilling tale of suspense that brings to life Arizona's Cochise County and the desert Southwest in all its beauty and mystery.

An old woman, a hoarder, is dying of emphysema in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. In cleaning out her house, her daughter, Liza Machett, discovers a fortune in hundred dollar bills hidden in the tall stacks of books and magazines that crowd every corner.

Tracing the money's origins will take Liza on a journey that will end in Cochise County, where Sheriff Joanna Brady is embroiled in a personal mystery of her own. A man she considers a family friend is found dead at the bottom of a hole in a limestone cavern near Bisbee. And now there is the mystery of Liza and the money. Are the two disparate cases connected? It's up to Joanna to find out.

Bonus Novella "The Old Blue line" Included.

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I love how the author sets up her characters in makes you fall in love with them. Joanna Brady is the compassionate, loyal public servant who does her job exceptionally well. Very good page turner with some twists that you won't see coming

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16th in the series but you could start here, Jance gives enough backstory - truthfully, there are little flashbacks for almost everything and everyone - to catch up a new reader. I don't remember her using the POV of someone other than Brady so extensively before, so that's a little different. Readers of the previous books will know who Liza is related to right away, but it won't take long before you see the connection anyway. I really liked that storyline, and the one involving Junior not so much. (Not a spoiler - it's practically spelled out in the book description). I thought Brady was pretty cold considering how long she's known Junior, plus her initial leap of assuming he was an animal torturer, and then the villains...c'mon, how likely was that? Kind of wondering why she chose to write him out of the story that way. But as usual, it's a nice quick read, nice sense of place and believable dialogue.

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