The stark beauty of the Arizona desert forms an ominous backdrop for J.A. Jance’s engrossing mystery/thriller, Judgment Call, featuring sheriff Joanna Brady.

High school principal Debra Highsmith is not Sheriff Brady’s favorite person, but her disappearance hits quite a bit too close to home—Joanna’s daughter, Jenny, is a student at the school. The line between the Cochise County sheriff’s job and her family life is further blurred when Jenny, out for a morning horseback ride, discovers her principal’s body on High Lonesome Road. Responding to Jenny’s panicked phone call, Brady is quickly on the scene, but the killer has shrewdly covered his tracks. Highsmith’s injuries, calculated to kill slowly, clearly point to a highly emotional motive, but even after another murder victim turns up, the list of suspects is scant.

As Joanna uncovers tantalizing clues to the deceased’s past, she tries desperately to shield her daughter from the ugly realities of police work, but Jenny already knows more than she should. Meanwhile, even as Joanna closes in on a culprit in the Highsmith case, she’s learning more than she ever wanted to know about the death of her father, decades ago.