Betrayal of Trust

May 23, 2011
In Jance's solid if a tad sentimental 20th J.P. Beamont novel (after Fire and Ice), the creaky-kneed Seattle detective and his third wife, Mel, both working for the Washington attorney general's unfortunately acronymed Special Homicide Investigation Team, have to probe a potentially explosive scandal: shortly after the governor's stepgrandson's cellphone was found to contain a snuff film, the troubled teen hanged himself in the governor's mansion. As Beau and Mel carry on their finely tuned good copâbad cop routines and employ the conveniently accessible talents of techie associates, Beau counterpoints his dogged pursuit of "arrogant jerks," whose well-heeled parents extricate them from all scrapes, with his gradual bittersweet discovery of the father who died before his birth. Jance's denunciation of adolescent bullying and adult hypocrisy rings true, a testimony to the fundamental decency of cops like Beau and Mel who walk the mean streets the rest of their society would rather not explore except in fiction. 8-city author tour.

Seattle investigator J.P. Beaumont and his partner, Mel Soames, investigate a snuff film, a suicide, a murder, and more. J.R. Horne's performance is strong and gritty. Beaumont and Soames interact with Washington State's governor and members of her blended family, who are embroiled in the series of murders. Horne's choice to narrate at an even pace with little intonation is a good one because it allows the listener some distance from the cruelty people inflict on one another. Horne keeps pace with the twists as the characters test the bounds of trust on every level. M.B.K. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

March 1, 2011

A girl is strangled to death, captured on video that appears on the cell phone of the teenage grandson of Washington State's governor. So the governor calls in her good friend J.P. Beaumont of the attorney general's Special Homicide Squad to discover what really happened. Soon it goes beyond putative teenage murderers to conspiracy in the state government. Jance's books sell at a clip of 1000 a month, and with a one-day laydown on July 26 and a 200,000-copy first printing, you know this is expected to be big. An eight-city tour.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2011

Two investigators for the Washington State Attorney General's Special Homicide Investigation Team are called upon to investigate a heinous crime with political connections.

Upon their arrival in Olympia, J.P. Beaumont and his wife Mel Soames are shown a snuff film that's been sent to the cell phone of Josh, the grandson of Governor Longmire's second husband. After Josh's mother died of a drug overdose, he moved into the governor's mansion. He denies knowing anything about the film or the identity of the young woman. J.P., who believes him, sends Josh's computer and phone to a computer expert to see what he can tell. His information becomes even more important when Josh commits suicide. The body of the girl on the film is found floating in a pond, but it's clear that she was strangled after the first film was made. J.P. and Mel trace her to Janie's House, a community center for poor and troubled teens, where they discover a connection to Josh's suicide. He was being cyber-bullied from a computer available to anyone at Janie's House, a place frequented by both the dead girl and the governor's daughters, who do community service there as tutors. The difficulty of the case is matched by something J.P. has just learned about his own background that will change his life.

The prolific Jance (Fire and Ice, 2009, etc.) again tells a story that will keep her readers wanting more.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

July 1, 2011
It's been several years since Jance gave Seattle PI J. P. Beaumont center stage (Justice Denied, 2007), although he was paired with another of her series protagonists, Joanna Brady, in Fire and Ice (2009). Beau (along with wife Mel, his partner on Washington's Special Homicide Investigation Team) is still the go-to guy whenever the attorney general has a politically sensitive case. When Governor Marsha Longmire, a high-school classmate of Beau's, finds a snuff film on her teenage stepgrandson's cell phone, Beau and Mel are asked to investigate; the case becomes more urgent when the boy commits suicide in his bedroom in the governor's mansion. As Beau recalls being uncool to Longmire's cool in high school, he and Mel find people of privilege acting as if they're above the law. Dogged police work, from skilled hacking to sifting through garbage, leads to a satisfying solution in Beau's nineteenth outing. There's not a lot of suspense here, but the detecting is solid, and fans will enjoy reconnecting with Beau, now an aging warhorse with bad knees.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)