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Bestselling author J.A. Jance continues Sheriff Joanna Brady's adventures in Dead to Rights. First issued in 1996, this is the fourth Brady mystery. The series began with Desert Heat in 1993 and the thirteenth, Damage Control, appeared in 2008.

Sheriff Brady must deal with a rebellious daughter who hasn't come to terms with the death of her father, jealousy and rivalries at work from senior staff, and her own unresolved grief. She interrupts a protest at an animal clinic and sends the deputy on duty there back to his beat. When the clinic owner is later murdered, suspicion falls on the protester and some blame Joanna for sending the deputy away. A year ago, the clinic owner had killed the man's wife in a drunken driving accident.

Despite the views of others and the circumstantial evidence that appears to confirm the man's guilt, Sheriff Brady believes him innocent. The victim's widow shows little grief and prefers golf and selling the clinic practice as soon as possible to answering questions. Her tête-à-tête with the local golf pro annoys the sheriff and adds to her suspicions. Then the sheriff learns the victim's assistant is pregnant with his child. It also appears the substitute vet is anxious to buy the practice.

Her overworked chief investigator has too many cases and too little time to investigate all of the sheriff's suspicions. In one case, an apparent accident becomes a murder investigation when he determines multiple blows killed the man. The man's daughter has disappeared. The investigator's chief suspects in two of his cases, the dead man's daughter and the protester, elude the sheriff's deputies accentuating their possible guilt.

The climax provides an exciting chase of the protestor that takes all of Sheriff Brady's intelligence and knowledge of the area. A few surprises surface before the murder of the clinic owner is resolved.