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Damange Control starts off with a literal bang when a Phoenix resident, fearing her abusive ex-boyfriend has broken in, shoots and kills the man breaking into her apartment in the middle of the night, only to discover that he is a complete stranger. While Jance does eventually answer the question of who the man was, it takes around 400 action-packed pages of mystery and mayhem to get there.

This particular Sheriff Joanna Brady novel sets a pretty furious pace. Sheriff Brady has to deal with flooding and power outages due to heavy rains, a couple who drive themselves off a scenic overlook into a canyon in what looks to be a suicide pact, a deadly fire in a trailer park, the daughters of the dead couple who are still fighting 30 years later over whether one stole the other's prom date and break up a bar and assault a deputy while doing so, and the body of a murdered woman found wrapped in garbage bags by the nephew of one of her detectives. And that's just the weekend. Things really start heating up come Monday.

And Joanna Brady's family life is almost as complicated as her work life. She and her new husband Butch are trying to balance her career, his about-to-be-finished novel with looming deadline, and a new born. Their tenant trashed the rental house and skipped out on the rent and may have been using the place to smuggle undocumented aliens into the country. Also, her mother, difficult under the best of circumstances, seems to be having marital difficulties with her second husband the county coroner. Joanna does her best to stay out of their mess, but with both of them calling her to tell their side of the story and asking her to help each find the other, Joanna cannot help but find herself sucked into their problems.

Jance manages to tie all the threads together, with a plot that develops at breakneck pace over the last 200 pages of the novel and brings the story full circle back to the woman with the dead stranger in her apartment. The story also allows Sheriff Brady to reflect on how she has grown into her role as Sheriff and gained the respect of her colleagues in other departments, as she is forced to call on them for assistance.

Despite the fast pace, Jance does not neglect the trappings of a tradition police procedural. Sheriff Brady attends staff meetings, consults with crime scene technicians, reads autopsy reports and deals with the budget issues affecting her department. In addition, along the way a number of the secondary characters in both Joanna Brady's personal and professional life grow and move on with their lives in ways that should have interesting repercussions for future books in the series.

Damage Controlis a real page-turner and fans of the series are definitely going to want to read it.