Shoot/don't shoot

Joanna Brady's life changed when her police officer husband was killed by a hired gunman in the Arizona desert. Determined to see justice done, she pursued the people responsible, and her efforts led to her election as sheriff of Cochise County. This second book in the Joanna Brady series opens with her still grieving and trying to be a steady presence for her nine-year-old daughter, Jenny, while also answering to the voters who put her in office.

As a new sheriff, Joanna has sound judgment and instincts but lacks hands-on experience, so she travels to Phoenix for a short police training course just before Thanksgiving. There she becomes convinced that a man in prison was wrongly convicted of murdering his estranged wife. Her unofficial inquiry soon pulls her into a dangerous case, and the holiday season, with relatives arriving for a family visit, grows far more complicated.

The investigation brings a serial killer uncomfortably close to Joanna, and the threat eventually reaches her young daughter.