Pretty good thriller, although initially I was annoyed at having to turn back because there were too many names, subplots. Ali Reynolds and Sistem Anselm have their dinner reunion precluded by the near death of a call girl, who is abandoned in the borderlands. Jose Reyes, a policy academy buddy of Ali's (not the ex-Mets shortstop) is almost killed in the line of duty and framed as a drug dealer. Then a popular postman is killed, and also framed as a drug dealer. There seem to be no ties between the two, except that the postman delivers the cop's mail; however, leveraging her technology boyfriend's company, Ali finds the link and has to rescue some innocents caught up in the revenge plot while the other crime is solved via the persistence of the Border Patrolmen who decided to ignore his boss's admonitions to leave it alone. ( )

Sleepy Santa Cruz County Arizona has suddenly broken out in mayhem. A small-time pimp is found dead in his car. A border patrol officer discovers a teenage girl, savagely beaten and left to die in the remote desert. A young county cop is shot down in a routine traffic stop gone awry. And that’s just the beginning of the body count in what turns out – even with all the violence – to be a tepid and overplotted mystery-without-mystery and suspense-without-suspense novel.

J.A. Jance is a prolific writer of crime novels, with her Joanna Brady series arguably the best of the bunch. But she may be spreading herself too thin with the Ali Reynolds books in addition to the J.P. Beaumont and Walker family mystery series.

Reynolds is essentially just a marginal figure here as various friends and acquaintances try to figure out why the injured policeman is being painted as a cop gone bad, and how to keep the beating victim alive long enough to identify her assailant. Most of the law enforcement figures in the book are painted as either crooked, lazy, or dim, and of course it’s up to Reynolds and the other characters (mostly the other characters) to unravel the tangle. ( )

Selected at random from the bookshelf for J A Jance. I definitely enjoyed it, will read more of the series. No bad language, interesting plot. Characters were likable. Ending left me feeling good. ( )

The story opens with the plight of an under-age runaway trapped in a sex-trafficking ring. Now that the eldest is 13, I fouud it a little too close to home to take. Maybe some other day, when both of the Offspring are all grown up.

As usual, with Left For Dead, J. A. Jance gives listeners a tense time as she weaves the threads of her subplots together. Although the perpetrator of one of the crimes was obvious before CD 6, there was always the chance that worse could come. Does it ever! Not all of the subplots have happy endings, but there are enough of them to make all that tension worth getting through.

I'll leave it up to you to find out the fate of the foolish runaway-turned-prostitute, Ali Reynold's injured cop friend and his family, and the postal worker with the tragic past. There will also be a change on the home front.

I'll reassure my fellow dog lovers up front that all will be well with the book's Jack Russell terrier. ( )