JOANNA BRADY

After writing my first thriller, when it was time to go back to J.P. Beaumont, I found that writing was fun again. That was when my editor suggested that I might consider starting a second series so I'd be able to alternate between sets of characters.

I had written ten books through a middle aged male detective's point of view. It seemed to me that it would be fun to write about a woman for a change. Because Beau was a Seattle homicide detective, most of the books took place in and around Seattle. Up to that time, I had spent the bulk of my life living in Arizona. And it seemed like it would be fun to use some of the desert stuff that was percolating in the back of my head.

In many of the books I’d read that featured female sleuths, I had found that the characters seemed to live isolated, solitary lives with maybe a cat and a single dying ficus for company.  Most of the women I knew lived complicated lives that involved husbands and children, in-laws and friends. They juggled family responsibilities and jobs along with church and community service. I set out to make my character, Joanna Brady (Yes, yes, I know. Another J. B. name) into someone whose life would reflect that complicated act of juggling.

As a writer, I try not to be too buoyed by good reviews or too devastated by bad ones, but there was one review that came in on the Joanna Brady books that is still engraved on my heart.  It came from Mostly Murder. “Every woman in America is obviously not a sheriff, but Joanna Brady is every woman.” Thank you, Mostly Murder.