Title: Damage Control (Joanna Brady #13)
Author: J.A. Jance
Publication Date: July 22, 2008
Length: 374 pages

An elderly couple drive their car off a cliff, apparently in a suicide pact. But when their daughters show up, fighting over the inheritance, it seems there's more to this case than meets the eye. Meanwhile, there's a fire in a mobile home and human remains are found in a trash bag that washes up after a storm. All this in a weekend in a small town.

This book is really ridiculous.There's so much going on at once; isn't one mystery enough for a mystery novel? I didn't really see the point in having multiple unrelated cases. None of them get at all interesting until right near the end. And I only made it that far because I was reading this for the Out of Your Comfort Zone Challenge, so it seemed wrong to give up on a book that's out of my comfort zone. But this book is just really boring.

Also, the writing had me laughing frequently, and not in a good way. I can be pretty forgiving of writing that's not very eloquent as long as the storytelling is good (I always argue that if I can't put the book down, that's a good writer, even if not by technical standards), but since I was bored through most of this book, I was painfully aware of every instance of "as you know, Bob".

1 star. I'm not giving up on mysteries altogether, but this one definitely wasn't for me.
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