Life has shifted for J. P. Beaumont. After a tragic accident that devastated–and ultimately disbanded–his Special Homicide Investigation Team, he accepts that he has left homicide detection behind at this point, but he has a lot of unanticipated free time on his hands. He’s keeping busy with renovations on the new house that he and his wife, Mel Soames, the newly appointed chief of police in … Bellingham, Washington, have bought. But new fixtures and paint palettes can occupy only so much of Beau’s daily life, and Mel is encouraging him to return to where he is needed: investigating crimes.
In the meantime, she is struggling to gain control of her new situation, cast into a department where some are welcoming–and some are not. It’s been a few months, and the tension in the police department is rising, but Beau realizes Mel has to tackle things in her own way, so he refrains from advising. But when Beau shows up one afternoon to survey the construction at their new house and finds Mel’s car there but no sign of her, his investigative instincts kick in. Suddenly he’s back in the game–except this time, his heart is on the line as well as his professional dignity.
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I have loved J.A. Jance’s Beaumont series since it started. But this book was way too hard to get into and through. I got to 83 pgs and had to quit. So much of those pages was taken up by who was related to whom and how and why that I totally lost track and then lost interest. I should have known it would likely be that way. There was a complex genealogical chart at the beginning of the book. Never a good sign. Sorry to give this one up but I just couldn’t soldier on any further!
This is the first J. A. Jance book that really disappointed me.
I like her Johanna Brady series and J. P. Beaumont series and look forward to reading each one. I read the first book in her Ladd & Walker series (Hour Of The Hunter), but never connected with the characters enough to read more of them.
This book, featuring Beaumont and Walker, didn’t engage me from the start the way her Beaumont and Brady books do. What makes that doubly sad is that she’s paired those two twice in stories that were much better than this one.
Partly it was the prologue. A prologue should be a brief and crisp set-up for the rest of the book. At 18 pages, the prologue here was neither. And the first 14 chapters are more set-up and tons of backstory – all of it slowing the pacing and progress. As is always the case in this situation, I muttered almost constantly, “Come on, get to the real story.”
Which didn’t really happen until about page 175, much too late for a book of this genre. Although, after that, the story became interesting. But a reader shouldn’t have to slog through almost half a book before the story takes off.
Walker makes only a brief appearance in Chapter 1 then disappears until Chapter 6. Beaumont doesn’t show up until Chapter 5 then disappears until Chapter 10. The main characters of a book, like the stars of a play, should be on-stage most of the time, not have ‘walk on’ parts here and there in the first two acts.
Jance got a car-related fact wrong, something that bugs a car guy like me. Plymouth Furys were not front-wheel drive cars. They were large rear-wheel drive sedans. When an author flubs an easily checked fact like that, it makes me wonder how many other facts she got wrong in the book.
The Tohono O’odham lore opening each chapter, while interesting, added nothing to the story. I wonder if Jance included it simply because she had it on hand and thought, ‘Gee, this would be neat to put in a book.’?
Included Stand Down Novella: This story was only slightly better than the novel it’s attached to. But like the novel, almost half this story had nothing to do with the main plot.
All in all, a very sub-par effort from a very accomplished author.
I didn’t hate this book, but it was far from good enough to earn 2 stars. It really only merits 1½ (A Big Letdown), and that’s being very generous. Had I been able to, I would have rated it 1.1 or 1.2 stars at best.