The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Girl from Devil’s Lake: A Brady Novel of Suspense (Joanna Brady Mysteries) by J. A Jance

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

The Girl from Devil's Lake: A Brady Novel of Suspense (Joanna Brady Mysteries) by J. A Jance https://www.amazon.com/Girl-Devils-Lake-Gripping-Mysteries/dp/0063252635 Arizona County Sheriff Joanna Brady solves her biggest case yet, from a body in the desert to crimes spanning decades and countries, in the thrilling latest installment in the New York Times bestselling suspense series. Sheriff Joanna Brady is looking forward to the holidays with her busy family, and to celebrating her daughter Jenny’s graduation from the police academy. But the family is interrupted when a body is discovered beneath a flooded bridge in the Arizona desert, and Joanna is called onto the case. A young boy was murdered, and the details of the crime scene tell Joanna two things: This was not the killer’s first murder. And it’s only a matter of time before he kills again. As Joanna digs deeper into the case, she begins to understand this murder is just one piece of a much, much bigger puzzle. She uncovers unlikely connections between cases of mysterious deaths and missing persons, having long since gone cold, that extend far beyond the confines of her small town and include the discovery of a body near Devil’s Lake, North Dakota. To get justice for the victims and to save the town of Bisbee from a predator, Joanna must chase down every dangerous lead. Meanwhile, as a dogged journalist is circling the case and privileged information is leaked, Joanna can’t be sure who to trust. Could a prolific killer be hiding in plain sight? And how far will that person go to keep his many crimes hidden? About the author J.A. Jance is the New York Times best selling author of 46 contemporary mysteries in four different series. A voracious reader, J. A. Jance knew she wanted to be a writer from the moment she read her first Wizard of Oz book in second grade. Always drawn to mysteries, from Nancy Drew right through John D. McDonald's Travis Magee series, it was only natural that when she tried her hand at writing her first book, it would be a mystery as well. J. A. Jance went on to become the New York Times bestselling author of the J. P. Beaumont series, the Joanna Brady series, three interrelated thrillers featuring the Walker family, and Edge of Evil. Born in South Dakota and brought up in Bisbee, Arizona, Jance lives with her husband in Seattle, Washington, and Tucson, Arizona. Jance is an avid crusader for many causes, including the American Cancer Society, Gilda's Club, the Humane Society, the YMCA, and the Girl Scouts. A lover of animals, she has a rescued Dachshund named Bella.

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Because you're about to go on a moment. Monster Education Roller Coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. I'm Alex Voss here from the Chris Voss Show.com. Ladies and welcome to the big show. As always, Chris Voss shows, a fan of it loves you, but it doesn't judge us not as harshly as the rest of your family. And we've been here for 60 years and 2,500 episodes.

And we've got just the most amazing minds on the show. Reefirm to your family, friends, and relatives. Go to Goodrease.com, fortunately. That's Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com. Fortune has Chris Foss won on TikTok and all those crazy places. Today we have returning guests who's been on the show about, I think, six plus times. J.A. Jantz joins us again. She's the author of The latest book to come out September 30th, 2025, The Girl from Devil's Lake,

a Brady novel of suspense, part of the Joanna Brady Mystery series. J.A. has been on the show with us multiple times. She's the New York Times best-selling author of over 46 contemporary mysteries in four different series. I always use her Amazon bio, and I think it needs to be updated because I think she has 60-plus books. She's a voracious reader. J.A. J.A. Jans knew she wanted to be a writer from the moment she read her first Wizard of Oz book in second grade, always drawn to mysteries from Nancy Drew right through John D. McDonald's Travis McGee series, and it was only natural that she tried her hand at writing her first.

first book, and it would be a mystery as well. And she's been a prolific author all of her life. Welcome to the show. Ms. Chance, how are you? I'm fine. Actually, I haven't been a prolific author all my life. I've only been a prolific author for half my life. I turned 80 last October, and the first Beaumont book was written in 1982.

So only half of life has been devoted to writing. And that half has been prolific. And, you know, we may tell it again on the store if you want, but, you know, your story of going through your life and being discouraged to write, even though that was kind of your thing, I'll never forget. It's always a great story, and I love sharing with people, you know, and so great example that even starting late, you know, you have the potential to do amazing things. Actually, I don't think starting at 40 was starting all that late because I had a lot of experience. I was, my first husband was not exactly husband material. He died of chronic alcoholism at age 42. He liked to hang out in dive bars.

And I remember one night hiding behind. behind a tree in Hammond, Indiana, because a gunfight had broken out in his favorite pub. So the guy, for a mystery writer, the guy was a gold mine of material. And then the fun thing about you is, if anyone ever pisses you off, they end up getting, I think, off the creative writing professor at the University of Arizona wouldn't allow me in his course. because I was a girl. In my first hardback, Our of the Hunter, which was also the first Walker family book, the main character is a lady who's a teacher on an Indian reservation,

but she always wanted to be a writer. Her husband was allowed in the creative writing program that was closed to her. He's dead at the beginning of the book. And the crazed character, in that book turns out to be a former professor of creative writing from the University of Arizona. So, yes, do not piss mystery writers off because we do even. Your story is always echo with me, Jay.

I love telling people about having you on the show. This is the Joanna Brady book. When I read, I love the Travis McGee books, but he never seemed to get any older. He never seemed to get any smarter. He always fell for the next. good-looking Broad, who came down the road, and she was always trouble. And so when I started writing, I decided that my characters would age over the years. That's why Bo, who started out in his 40s in the books as a cop at Seattle PD,

is now my age and retired from being a cop. But I did the same thing with the Joanna Brady books. when I started writing those I did so as an antidote for the Beaumont books because the Beaumont books are written in the first person they're written from a male point of view and they were written in the

Seattle area where I was relatively new so when it was time to write that next series I decided to press the easy button I decided to use third person instead of first I decided to have a female protagonist and I set them

in Southern Arizona where I grew up. In the first scene of the first Joanna Brady book, Desert Heat, Joanna is there with her mother, Eleanor, her nine-year-old daughter, Jennifer, and they're waiting for her husband to come home so they can go out and have dinner to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary. It has just had a teeny tiny, tiny, tiny bit of sex ed at Greenway School. And she has now counted on her fingers. And she figured out that there aren't enough months between their anniversary and her birthday. And so she throws a hand grenade into the conversation by asking her mother if she was a preemie. Well, of course,

she wasn't a preemie. She was right on time. The wedding was late. And it's something that Joanna's mother has always been has pitched a fit about for the past however many years. Oh, wow. When we meet Jennifer and Brady in the girl from Devils Lake, she has grown up. She's a college graduate partway through an earlier book, missing and endangered.

She changes, she decides to follow in her mother's foot steps and changes her major to criminal justice. When this book starts, she has just, she's about to graduate from the same police academy that Joanna attended after she was elected sheriff. And Joanna is on her way to be the speaker at Jenny's graduation. party or graduation ceremony from the police academy so we've watched this child grow up and i think that's one of the things people enjoy about my books they the characters don't just stay in one place in one dimension they have lives they have kids they have friends that they lose along the way and and i think that keeps my readers engaged and it keeps me in engaged as well. And it's important

to keep you engaged. I mean, so how many books have you written? I think it's 60 plus now, if I recall from our last video. I just finished the next alley book, which is called Smoke and Mirrors. And I've started on the next. I had the prolog

in one chapter of the next Beaumont book, and I think the next Beaumont book will actually be number 70. Wow. I've been writing at a rate of 1.6 books a year for 40 years, but who's counting? Good for you. Yeah, but I mean, that is something. And this is why I always brag to people, and I say, we had a miss a chance on the show again. And it's always fun to have you.

We've had different after show and before show discussions about some of the stories of your life and some of the impacts. And so, yeah. This book, The Girl from Devil's Lake, is unusual. When long-time readers, when they open the first page, they'll be astonished to find themselves not in Joanna Brady's southern Arizona, but in a town called Fertile Minnesota in 1956. And on that day, in 1956, an 11-year-old boy named Stephen Roper, who loathes his step-grandmother, murders her by by stringing fishing string across the top step of their porch and then luring her to come outside because a raccoon is after her cat

and write this down he commits murder and gets away with it at age 11 I am writing this down now and as he and that sets the stage for him to become a serial murderer. So in the background of the book, as we watched Joanna Brady moving forward with the investigation of a young child whose body has been found floating in floodwaters under the San Pedro River Bridge in St. David, while she's moving forward with that, we're watching Stephen Roper grow up and launch off on his career. And what he does is he poses as someone with a normal life.

He's a teacher during the school year. And then he uses his summer vacations to go traveling across the country, murdering people willy-nilly. And those stranger on stranger homicides are the hardest ones to solve because there's no connection to the perpetrator. traitor and the victim. And so he has left a trail of bodies from coast to coast. This comes to it, this huge case comes to a head in Joanna Brady's small jurisdiction. And it's so I saw play once called Two Trains Running. And in a way, this book is also Two Trains Running.

on side-by-side tracks that eventually come together. Amazing book writing that you do. Do you know what number this is in the series of the Joanne Boomer? I believe it's number 20. Number 20. The Joanne Brady. Don't make me swear by that, but I think it's number 20. Can we get a Bible?

We want to get a swear by on this one. No, I mean, it's amazing. And how many for readers out there that are just discovering you, how many, I'm not sure what they're called, but how many threads of different series do you have so people know what to look for? I don't know. Yesterday, I settled a bet for a husband and wife in Tempe, Arizona, because he said that I had taken down a murderer in Munch, in Mons, Park, Arizona, in one of my books, but did I know which one it was? They're starting to test you. I had no. You have 70 books like, you know, I got one.

I can't even remember what's in it. But I managed to figure it out, and the answer to his question, which meant he won a bet with his wife, was Hand Up Evil, Allie Reynolds, number three. here's the thing that's tough right now we're talking about the girl from devil's lake which i finished writing a year and a half ago since then i've been out talking about the next beaumont den of iniquity the next alley reynolds overkill while writing the current, the next Allie Brady, which is,

Ellie Reynolds, which is done. So I'm juggling all of these different books in my head. And sometimes when people ask me questions about the current book, they probably think I don't even know anything about it. Are you, are you sure you wrote that book? Well, yes, I think I did back in the deep, dark past. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, you have a lot going on. You have these different character threads. I saw you last on Denin of Iniquity. You were on the show at September 11th, 2024. So, wow, it's our season, today or tomorrow, the 11th? I've got my surgery Friday. Yeah, it's the most the 11th. So, yeah, we saw you just sort of a year ago for Denham Iniquity.

And then I think we've had you on the show. One, two, three, four, five, five. times. So this is your sixth appearance. Congratulations. And it's always fun to talk to you in the stories that you tell and you weave and people just love your books. What do you think resonates with your audience on your book writing? I think what resonates is my characters aren't superheroes. They're ordinary people going through their lives. When And early on in my writing career, I read a book by a guy who's a big name author now. But in that book, he had a dog.

The dog was in the house next door. And when the family left, there was no arrangement made for caring for the dog. And the house was burned down and the dog died. So the dog was only in the book to be a victim of the fire. And I haven't read one of that guy's book since. But that affected me because I thought, if you're going to have animals in a book, if you're going to have kids in a book, somebody has to look after them. Joanna is having this, has the job of sheriff, which calls her out to, incident.

at all hours of the day and night. She had a young daughter. And in book number three, this guy shows up, and he's still hanging around in book number four. And I could see that a romance was blossoming. And my then editor said, oh, don't let them get married. If they get married, it'll just be boring.

I'm sorry. I've been married with my husband, my second husband, the good one. He says the first one. That it's made his life perfect. He set the bar low. Very low. We've been married for going on 40 years.

Congratulations. It's not, being married isn't boring. It's an experience in listening. It's an experience in negotiating. There's a lot of things going on. So Joanna and Butch Dixon got married. I happen to operate on the assumption that what happens in my character's bedrooms, bedrooms goes on behind closed doors. So somebody wrote to me and said, well, do Butch and Joanna have a platonic marriage?

And I said, well, they have two kids. I don't think so. Yeah, somebody's connected. I feel like that my characters are ordinary people who have experiences that we all experience. In one book, Joanna Brady's father, who was clearly beginning to develop Alzheimer's, took himself out the door of his assisted living facility and stepped in front of a moving vehicle. And, of course, that was shocking. and but but it's the type of thing that people deal with yeah and in in the book that i just the jolly reynolds book that i just finished writing smoke and mirrors that starts with her

widowed mother marrying for the second time so i think that's part of what resonates with my characters is they the mysteries are there and the mysteries are front and center but i think the people really connect with what's going on with the character's lives in the background yeah one of my favorite stories that i always tell people whenever i reference you as a prolific author uh in my mind for half your life the last time of your life as you put it uh is the story of how one of your audience uh people came to you and said did you know that one of your characters and as an alcoholic and the light went on. I always thought that story was great. Well, the thing that was interesting to me, she did. It was the fourth Beaumont, but when I started writing the

Boe books, those are in first person. He couldn't work all the time. And I wasn't allowed in the creative writing program, but I was smart enough to figure out that you should write what you know. and having spent 18 years of my life with a guy who died of booze at age 42, I knew a lot about drinking, so that's what I had Baudu in a spare time.

And I didn't think about it in terms of anything but just a piece of stage business in the background of the story. But then in assigning for the fourth book

is when the lady came up and asked me, She said, you know, Bo drinks every day. He has a drink of choice. It's starting to interfere with his work. So J.P. Beaumont have a problem. And I said, these are books. But more people ask me that same question. And I finally figured out that I had created

Bo's background based on my history with a problem drinker. And my readers recognized it before I recognized it. And that's sort of the story. That's why I love that story is because it's so amazing. But I've also had people tell me that reading about Bow's struggle has helped them deal with their own addiction struggles. That's something I never anticipated. In fact, I was doing a signing someplace in this really, scary looking guy. I was in a grocery store in Seattle on 85th Street. And this scary looking

guy, but he was wearing a t-shirt with his packet of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve and tattoos hither and yon. And he came up to the table. And he said, you know, I've been a bartender all my life. Then the doctor told me if I didn't quit drinking, I was going to die. And so I quit drinking. But that meant I had to stop being a bartender. And that meant I'd lost all my friends. So he said, I've opened this non-alcoholic bar just up the street.

Would you like to do a book sign? there. And I think this is the scariest place I've ever seen. I've seen some scary places. But I went and the bookstore, the bookstore who brought the books to the event, they were kind of concerned too. But it really is interesting how my fiction interacts with people in real life. Yeah.

Having you on the show multiple times and other great authors, you know, I've learned Stories are the owners, men, it's the life. They're the fabric of our lives. And it's interesting how authors, like yourself, have used those real stories of your life, your life experience, and how much you guys utilize that that maps into weave the great stories that you guys put out that endears to people. And then how much that impacts them? It's just always astounding.

I mean, you're writing fiction, and yet these stories help people. that's why I think it's not starting to be starting to write at age 40 was a lot smarter than starting to write at age 23 because I had learned a lot more along the way in the intervening years and it's helpful if you know something and have something to say we certainly have a lot more to say in our older age than we do when I was younger I was younger I was like I don't know whatever but now You know, you can't get me to shut up half the time. That's why I own a podcast. Now, you've got, that's one of the challenges of being a prolific author like yourself. You know, you've got, you've got, you know, we have people that come on from the Tom Clancy series, and they've got their series, they've got Tom Clans. And you've got so many books that you're spinning.

And like you say, it takes so long for the publishers these days to edit and, you know, bring stuff to market. Of course, there's a timing to it, of course. But, you know, you've written two or three books. the can by the time you're doing a promotion for the other one, right? Yes. I have to tell you, crossing into real life in my books is sometimes can be an incredible blessing. In one of my books, years ago, we were having Thanksgiving dinner and my 40-something-year-old son.

looked at me and said, you know, Mom, Bo is getting pretty long of tooth. Have you ever thought of writing a J.P. Beaumont prequel? And I said, no, I've never thought of writing a J.P. Beaumont prequel. But then the following August came along. It was time to write the next Beaumont book. And writing a prequel was the only idea I had. So I was sitting in the family room with my computer over. open and the screen absolutely blank.

And I started thinking about Bo. If you had kids and brothers and sisters and grandkids, and great grandkids, that's a lot of people's birthdays to remember. But then if you have all of these characters and you're supposed to remember how old they are, then that's a whole other issue. So I cheated with Bo by giving him my birthday.

So I was sitting there. looking at my computer screen and I was thinking about how old I was and how old Beaumont was. And then I remembered a guy from Busby High School. His name was Doug Davis. He was a year ahead of me in school. He was smart. He was athletic. He was handsome. He was the whole package. He was at Busby High. He was the belledictorian of the class of 1961. He left Bisbee High School. He went to West Point.

From West Point to Ranger School. He went from Ranger School to Vietnam, where he died weeks before his 23rd birthday. Over time, through my business. books, I became acquainted with and ultimately friends with the flight attendant who was engaged to Doug at the time he died. So I was sitting there looking at my computer screen and I thought, well, what would happen if I had Beau and Doug Davis? meet up and interact in Vietnam.

So I called Bonnie, his then-fiancee. I called Bonnie, and I said, what would you think if I intertwined Doug's real life with Beau's fictional one in the next book? And she said, well, let me think about it. She called me back a couple of days later, and she said, I think my Douglas, would be safe in your hands.

And so I launched off on writing this book. Bo is in the hospital. He is having on his way to the hospital for bilateral knee replacement surgery. And he's thinking, you know, this is really, what if I die? I don't want to leave Mel by herself. And this is, but he goes, he goes through the surgery. And he wakes up in his room. And there's this guy in fatigues, Vietnam-era patis,

looking out the window at the space needle, except the hospital window is on the wrong side of the hospital for him to be able to see the space needle. Oh. Because he is having these painkiller-fueled dreams. When my husband had his surgery, his dreams were really wild. Wow. So this guy walks across the room to Bo's desk, bed, and he looks down at Bo and he says,

you got old. And Bo looks up into Doug Davis' useful pace and says, and you didn't. This week, through that book. Bonnie Abney, after 70 years of thinking someone else's mother had introduced her to Doug in Florida, she finally discovered the real guy whose mother used her because of my book, Second Watch. Really? Holy crap. When I got his email and he said, I took a, Doug and I were roommates or a sophomore year at West Point and we took a road trip to Florida to Homestead and as soon as I read those words I had heard that story from Bonnie's point of view but she thought the woman who

introduced her was a guy named O'Connor and the guy whose mother introduced her was actually named Connor wow holy crap So that's the magic of intersecting real lives with fiction. Isn't that amazing? I mean, some things are stranger than fiction or some things are in real life. I don't know. I can't pull the reference. So, Ms. Jantz, do you see anything coming from, you just launched this series?

Do you want to give us the titles? I think you mentioned a couple of them earlier of pending future book salesmen to get on to. The most reasoned Alley book is Overkill. That starts with a woman, this cleaning lady is working in her in the household and cleaning up after a big holiday party. The husband, his car is in the garage, but he's evidently, he's nowhere to be seen, so she figures he must have gone off on a trip using an Uber. And then the woman of the household shows up at the top of the stairway, drenched in blood, and holding a bloody knife. She happens.

So the, and there's a cat upstairs with her. The cat is also bloody. And someone asked me, well, If an animal is in the book, somebody has to feed the animal. The animal should have a name. And so I named the cat Pearl. And somebody wrote and said,

why did you name the Cat Pearl? And I said, well, she's white. But it happens that the woman at the top of the stairs holding the knife is, Allie Reynolds's current husband's former wife. And the guy who's dead is Allie Reynolds' current husband's former partner and best friend. And when his wife and the best friend got together, that was the end of the partnership and the end of the friendship.

So when Clarice, the ex-wife, calls the Klein Newn Enterprises looking for help and Allie gets on the phone B doesn't want to have anything to do with her the husband doesn't want to have anything to do with her but Allie who is incapable of minding her own business

has to become involved so that's overkill well Ms. Chance it's always an honor to have you on And I always love telling stories. And when we talk to authors about the business of authorship, I mean, you just said a great example for authors and a high bar for them to follow. So we always appreciate having you on the show. Well, the ancient sacred charge of the storyteller, the beguile the time. And there is no higher praise than to find out my books have kept someone company while they've been in a hospital wait.

room. I should probably take one in this Friday. I'm going in two days on Friday for a hernia surgery. So I should probably take your books in because I'm going to be waiting a long time. Yes, take a couple books in because believe me, the hospital rooms television set will not function. I'm finding out how fun the medical field is this week. So, Ms. Jans, give us your dot-coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs and get to?

know more about you. There's an official J.A. Jan's author website and they can reach me that way. My email address is posted there. I write a weekly blog that can also be found at the website. And the blogs are sort of my autobiography and weekly installments because they're like letters to my readers, letting them know what's going on in the writer's life on a weekly basis. And so follow Ms. Jans, follow our stories, read all our books, just go ahead, just take

your A-Mex card and go buy every single one on Amazon and follow the series. And it's always wonderful to have you on, Ms. Jans. I always appreciate it. You should give them a warning. People have told me that reading my books is like eating free toes because you can't read just one. I love how all your audience writes you and been like, why did you name me? the person that they sound like they really get into the stories and they they flesh them out

and incorporate them in their own lives and that's just amazing storytelling i i answer every email that comes in because readers are my bread and butter well miss jans thank you very much for coming the show we really appreciate it you're welcome and good luck with your surgery thank you i'm i'm gonna eat it uh so uh so folks ordered the book where fine books are sold by all of Mrs. Jans's book. She's been on the show six different times. You can search for the

other episodes in the show if you like. The Girl from Devil's Lake a Brady novel of suspense, part of the Joanna Brady Mystery series out September 30th 2025. Thanks for tuning in. Go to Goodrease.com,

Fortress Christchristch, Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com Forchast Christch, Chris Foss, 1 on the TikTok and all those crazy places in the internet. Be good to each other. Stay We'll see you guys next time.