DEVIL’S CLAW

With her mother, her former mother-in-law, her future mother-in-law, her daughter, and her fiancé all jockeying for her attention before the big day—her wedding is just a week away—Cochise County, Arizona, sheriff Joanna Brady hopes for a little peace and quiet at the office, but it is not to be. Unpopular teenager Lucy Ridder and her pet hawk Big Red are missing, and her mom Sandra, only one day past an eight-year prison term for killing her allegedly abusive husband, is lying dead in a culvert. Did Lucy murder mommy for doing in daddy those long years ago? Or did mommy's death hinge on the contents of the Tupperware container she buried just before being carted off to jail? Joanna’s barely gotten started worrying about the Ridder woes when her octogenarian neighbor Clayton Rhodes dies and leaves her his acreage, placing her squarely in the crosshairs of his disinherited daughter Reba. What's more, an office romance will reactivate memories of Joanna's premarital pregnancy; the sheriff in the neighboring county won't share information; an unbreakable computer code pops up; and chances of Joanna finding Lucy ahead of a counterfeit federal agent look bleak. One more will die before Joanna can settle down to her wedding jitters, but by then it's too late—she's off to Paris on her honeymoon.

The eighth Brady case (Outlaw Mountain, 1999, etc.) is most notable for the behavior of bridegroom Butch, who is so helpful, so unquestioningly supportive, that you know he'll make Joanna a great wife.