Because I respect the opinion of two of my librarian friends who love J.A. Jance's J.P Beaumont Series, I decided it was time to give one a try. With 21 in the series I won't lack for reading if this proves a hit. Just as Beaumont says of his new partner, Peters "There's so much to learn before you can function as a team., I'm getting to know this new character. He works homicide (Detective) in Seattle. He's tall, 6'3", downs MacNaughton's like it's water, and if it's healthy he's not eating it. He's divorced, doesn't cook, eating most meals out, but those that he doesn't, get proper treatment with real plates, silverware and napkins. He runs his dishwasher and washing machine once a week, even if not needed. When he divorced he got an apartment close to downtown, gave up his car and either walks, buses, or gets a car from the motor pool for transportation. He's named after both paternal and maternal grandfather's, Jonas Piedmont, grew up as "Beau" but prefers J.P.When a sludge truck driver finds the body of a beautiful 5 year old girl, J.P and Peters are the detectives called to the scene. Angel, Angela Barstogi was dumped on the roadside, like a piece of garbage, still wearing her pink Hollie Hobby nightgown. We quickly learn she had been reported missing just a few hours ago. Forget the "if you find them in the first 24 hours". It's soon apparent that her mother is a brain-washed cult member and the search is on for the killer. Lots of possible suspects but the Pastor Michael Brody is at the top of the list. According to J. A. Jance she had a chance encounter in the 80's with a cult. She decided to use some of this to form her first book. The cult though, is just the beginning of what proves to be an interesting first venture in Beaumont's career. Besides a well plotted mystery, characters that come alive on the page, the Seattle backdrop proves an interesting setting. Robin and Mary, I'm in!
Book number One in the J.P. Beaumont series by J. A. Jance - 3 stars. Beaumont investigates the murder of a 5 year old girl whose family is part of a religious cult. The easy suspect is the child's mother or the preacher - who teaches extreme physical punishment for personal sins, but in short order, both of those suspects have also been murdered. Now the child's father (mother's estranged husband) becomes the prime suspect and is arrested even though there is no evidence connecting him to the crimes. And, while all that police work is happening, Beaumont meets a beautiful woman, falls in love, and gets married - all in the span of a week; a week filled with the murder investigation and more sex that I have previously observed in all of Jance's books combined. In many ways, this book might deserve better than 3 stars. It has a story that held my attention - even when I knew what the climax would be. But... the storytelling is somewhat disjointed - almost as if it was written by a novice who was trying to check all the boxes in a list of things that should be in this type of story. This was Jance's first book so that deficiency is too be expected and I would have probably overlooked it had I not read all her other books. This is better than either the Brandon Walker series or the Ali Reynolds series from Ms. Jance, so I am encouraged to read the rest of the series.
Do You like book Until Proven Guilty (1985)?
The audiobook version of this detective story kind of threw me because the same man narrates Michael Connelly's superior Harry Bosch detective novels so my brain wanted to make J.P. Beaumont into Harry Bosch. Not going to happen. Not a bad start for the detective series, though. I liked the setting (Seattle) a lot and I liked the simplicity of the character who didn't have a lot of emotional baggage as so many characters do these days, but I dislike it when a character is introduced at being good at his job (as J.P. is, he's got some cop years under his belt) but then is handed his ass by a lady in a red dress. I'm not kidding. She wore a red dress.That's just...stupid. Love at first sight? I can go for that. Stupid decisions? Been there. But the dreaded "girl walks into your homicide case and you fall in love" scenario? Big thumbs down. Add in some unbelievably cheesy dialogue and cliched sex scenes and it's a Lifetime Movie of the Week. But since this is the first in the series with J.P., I will look for the next one to see if he gets any smarter.A bright note in the book is J.P.'s brand new partner, who has a very interesting backstory. Or maybe J.P. will be like Murphy Brown and get a new partner each book. That would be funny.
—Julie
If I read another mystery/thriller in which a male detective/cop/ex-cop turned P.I. refers to a woman as a “broad”, I think I’m gonna scream!! Is it the decade in which the book was written? The 1980s and early 1990s seem to be where I’m getting snagged by this dismissive, sexist attitude toward women (and minorities, and ethnic groups, and basically anyone who is not a white alpha-male). Maybe to our collective credit we've become a little more enlightened in the past quarter-century. Is it the gender of the author? Jance is a female author, but that doesn’t seem to make a difference. A male author, John Sandford, has produced both the offensive Lucas Davenport, but also the affable, comfortable, and downright incomparable Virgil Flowers; I know the genre does have likeable male protagonists, I guess I just need to keep searching for them. And yes, this book was just too stupid to even comment on.
—Michelle
Damn! What a cloyingly, nauseatingly crap book! This is not a detective/mystery story, it's a gag-inducing, shut off your brain and shake your head at the stupidity, love at first sight crap story. The detective instantly falls head over heels in love with a rich woman in a red dress and red car who magically appears at a funeral. First thing this hardened detective does? Well he tells her everything about the investigation! Then it gets better, after some really cheesy conversations, terribly cliche sex scenes, a marriage proposal is made! All of this in the span of 3 days! In between all these, he waxes on about this woman to his partner. Confirmation that this was some kind of teenage fantasy came in the sex scenes which read like the old romance books with sentences like "we came together and I was complete" WTF???What rubbish, what utter total complete rubbish!
—Zaphoddent
