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SADDLEBAG DISPATCHES
“
I may not have been born in Arizona, but the place lives in my mind, heart, and imagination....”
oman W est W a
of the
A Conversation with Cochise County Native,
New York Times Bestselling Author J.A. Jance.
T
oday’s Western Sheriffs (and the Eastern ones, too) ride into town in trucks in the modern west or a tricked out squad car with a computer at the dashboard. However, just as in the old days, a gun rests on the hip with a star pinned to the shirt. In real life as in J.A. Jance’s novels that Sheriff may well be a woman. In 2022, there were sixty female Sheriffs on duty in the United States.
Although Jance’s books are most often grouped in the “mystery” section of libraries and bookstores, I say, by virtue of her heroine Joanna Brady and Jance’s own immersion in the western landscape and culture exhibited in the books, Jance is definitely a western author. Protagonist Brady is the daughter of a sheriff. Brady becomes sheriff after the murder of her sheriff husband, and after she solves that, at the same time clearing her husband’s name
JOAN LEOTTA
