PARTNER IN CRIME

The authors two series sleuths finally meet when J. P. Beaumont, of Washington's Special Homicide Investigation Team, comes to Sheriff Joanna Brady's Cochise County, Arizona, to investigate the murder of a local artist. Cotter Smith narrates J. P.'s first-person chapters and Debra Monk Joanna's third-person chapters. Both narrators are superb: Smith captures J.P.'s world-weary directness; his deep voiced, expressive narration conveys his reactions to being in the home of his late ex-wife. Monk is just as skilled, with a voice that shows its complexities as she expresses Joanna's toughness, her struggles to deal with her job, and the joy and weariness that her life brings her in turn. The meetings of both detectives and narrators are ideal pairings. M.A.M. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/MAY 03]