Downfall: A Brady Novel of Suspense by J. A. Jance

Joanna's plate is pretty full.  She's pregnant, burying her mother and her step-father, sending her oldest off the college, worrying a bit about the election in the fall, and now they have two dead bodies at the bottom of Geronimo's Peak.  She goes off to check on the bodies.  There's no way to know that the killer is as close to her as he is...

William Morrow and Edelweiss allowed to read this book for review (thank you).  It will be published September 6th.

What Joanna sees are two dead women.  They are laying on top of each other.  Only one had been camping up there.  Did they fight and then fall?  Were they lovers?  Was there someone else with them?

The more she digs into the case, the stranger it gets.  One girl was doing a study on cactus that only grew in certain areas.  She believed she found a new specimen that could make her thesis shine.  The other was a teacher who was married to a reverend of an oddball church.

It seems the teacher was offering private lessons to some of the boy students.  Lessons that made her a predator.  Talking to the students is what gave them this clue.  The informant was as guilty as the boy he was accusing but that doesn't come out until they search her home and find the letters from the boys.  As bad as those actions were, that wasn't what got her killed.  She's pregnant and her husband had a vasectomy.  Who's the father?

This is a well written police procedural with plenty of drama.  The killer was too close to home to make Joanna feel vindicated.  Others died that shouldn't have.  But there was no way to know.  I like to hate killers, this one just made me sad.

I'm already waiting for the next adventure with Joanna and her family.  Ms. Jance is a great author.