Shoot Don’t Shoot audiobook

4.5 Stars for Shoot / Don’t Shoot: Joann Bradley Mystery Series, Book 3 (audiobook) by J. A. Jance read by Ellen Travolta. Joann Bradley, the newly elected Cochise County Sheriff is enrolled in a police training seminar in Peoria, Az. While attending the seminar she realized that details to a couple of murders didn’t add up and there must be a cereal killer on the loose. It’s fun reading stories that take place so close to home. Except that there was a cereal killer hunting women a few miles away from me. Fortunately the Sheriff got the killer.

This is one of the earlier Sheriff Joanna Brady novels; it briefly explains about Sheriff Brady’s husband, Andy’s death and how she meets Butch Dixon. These books are considered mysteries, which makes sense because what else would a Police Detective do but solve the mystery of how an event occurred.

I'm really getting involved in these people's lives. J.A. Jance definitely knows how to keep the ball rolling. I've already started the next in the serious, Dead to Rights, because I'm on this roller coaster and can't get off! Not that I want to.The main character, Sheriff Joanna Brady, is believable, flawed, gutsy, and vulnerable. I like her.Shoot Don't Shoot doesn't sugarcoat the problem of greedy people manipulating people's memories through nefarious ways such as drugs and hypnosis. Joanna tries to get the cop training she desperately needs, but of course she finds herself smack dab in the middle of murder and mystery. I like the dynamics of family and friends in this book (all the books, really). The author sets the tone and scene in such a way that you can't help but feel you are there, that you actually know these people. Several new developments in Joanna's personal life occur in this book. I can't wait to see what happens next!

Loved it!! Loved it!! Joanna Brady is an awesome & fearless Sheriff. This is a fast pace, fun filled mystery. Gripping ending. 5 Stars!!

3rd in the series. I discovered JA Jance this week when looking for a new mystery series to read as some junk food for my brain. I needed a break from difficult content and mysteries often serve well for that purpose. I am lucky to have found this series available on audio through Overdrive, and have listened to the first three books over the last three days.I like Joanna Brady. But in this book my favorite character is Jenny. Ms. Jance did a very good job creating a child character who is precocious, smart, silly and all child. Most authors tend to give the children characteristics which are too adult-like, or too infantile. I also really like the three grandparents who are each distinctive and unique. I hope that all of them continue to develop in future books.

Joanna has just been elected sheriff and has decided to go to 6 weeks of school to learn more about law enforcement. It is Thanksgiving so her parents and daughter come to visit. Joanna gets involved in a case where she is sure the wrong man is in jail and sets out to find out the truth

Another good story about Joanna Brady! I enjoy them all so far.

The book is fast paced and builds characters, it’s enjoyable, but do NOT get the Ellen Travolta audiobook. It’s horrible. She changes name pronunciation every other sentence. Joanna becomes Joann. Tempe Arizona is pronounced TEMP. Homicide is pronounced HOMOcide. It’s incredibly distracting. Read the book.

Reviewed as an audiobook.This is the third book in Jance’s Sheriff Joanna Brady series, Joanna’s husband, a sheriff’s deputy in Cochise County, Arizona was killed in the line of duty and she decided to run for sheriff - and won becoming the first female sheriff in that county and one of very few in Arizona. Now just a few months into her new career, she is off to the state police academy in a Phoenix suburb for training (unfortunately the training begins Thanksgiving week). But before she heads north, one of her deputies introduces her to the mother of Jorge Grijalva, a man imprisoned for the murder of his wife in Peoria, who is about to agree to a plea deal. Even though this crime is outside of her jurisdiction, she decides to at least look into it. While at the academy, she befriends the other female officer in the class as well as meeting Butch Dixon, proprietor of a nearby local bar. All of these people are connected in one way or another, as is Dave Thompson, the main instructor at the academy who has been assigned there because of his “attitude.” An attempted murder, and then a murder, bring Joanna in contact with Carol Strong, a Phoenix detective. They will work together to solve murders past and present. This may not be a 5 star book given writing style, the number of books in series, and depth of story, but it is my favorite Jance book to date. Joanna Brady, at least so far, is my favorite Jance protagonist. Her character in at once naive, flawed, brave yet vulnerable. And I felt the narrator did a very goo job as she has in earlier audiobooks.

I don’t quite know what to say about this book. I enjoyed the story, but there are things that caught me off guard. Most noticeably is to be reading it twenty-four years later and being struck by the absence of all the ‘personal technology’ we take for granted today. That there are payphones everywhere – and our heroine actually has the coins necessary to use them – and that there are no cell phones. The other thing that really struck me is that I listened to this book as an audio performance by CJ Critt. I’m used to this narrator as one of the voices behind Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series so I was expecting to ‘recognize’ the voice. I didn’t. Not at all. If I didn’t recognize the name, I would never have realized that I’ve heard her perform before. I’ve read the cross-over novellas with the Ali Reynolds series and I was startled to see how differently several of the characters are portrayed by that point in Joanna’s story line. I’m curious to see what happens to cause the changes.

** spoiler alert ** I like this series. The characters, while not always likable (like Joanna’s mother or her instructor in her police training class), are believable. There is always the contrast between Joanna’s sense of right and wrong vs. the off-kilter compass of the killers. In this book a serial killer is killing women, keeping panties for a souvenir and throwing people off his tracks by setting up other individuals in these women’s lives. Joanna is still grieving her husband’s death and monitoring her daughter’s grief. She is also still dealing with the sexism in the sheriff’s office and now in her police training class. But she also is making new friends, both female and male. I’m looking forward to the next book.