Showing results by author "J. A. Jance"

Former Seattle homicide cop J. P. Beaumont is learning to enjoy the new realities of retirement - doing morning crossword puzzles by a roaring fireplace; playing Frisbee with his new dog; having quiet lunches with his still-working wife. But then his past comes calling. 

J. P. Beaumont must find the killers of an entire family before they get to his five-year-old eyewitness, who was hiding in a closet at the murder scene.

Juggling a family and a career is never easy - and it's becoming a real challenge for Sheriff Joanna Brady. Coping with the impending delivery of her second child as well as a staff shortage, the last things Joanna needs are two serious crimes. First, the body of an unidentified man is found in the desert, all of his fingers savagely severed. Following the scant clues, Joanna learns that the victim was an ex-con who had served 20 years in prison after confessing to the murder of his pregnant wife. During his last days, he was seen following and photographing a young woman.

More than 20 New York Times best-selling authors team up to create a first-rate serial novel -- a collaboration that combines the skills of America’s greatest storytellers to produce a gripping, spellbinding mystery.

Before he retired, J. P. Beaumont had looked forward to having his days all to himself. But too much free time doesn't suit a man used to brushing close to danger. When his longtime nemesis, retired Seattle crime reporter Maxwell Cole, dies in what's officially deemed to be an accidental fire, Beau is astonished to be dragged into the investigation at the request of none other than the deceased victim himself. In the process Beau learns that just because a long-ago case was solved doesn't mean it's over.

Years ago Amos Warren, a prospector, was gunned down out in the desert, and Sheriff Brandon Walker made the arrest in the case. Now the retired Walker is called in when the alleged killer, John Lassiter, refuses to accept a plea deal that would release him from prison with time served. Lassiter wants Brandon and The Last Chance to find Amos's real killer and clear his name.

A shadow from J. P. Beaumont's past shows up after 30 years, an ex-girlfriend whose husband has been brutally murdered.

When Santa Cruz County deputy sheriff Jose Reyes, Ali’s classmate from the Arizona Police Academy, is gunned down and left to die, he is at first assumed to be an innocent victim of the drug wars escalating across the border. But the crime scene investigation shows there’s much more to it than that, and soon he and his pregnant wife, Teresa, both fall under suspicion of wrongdoing. Ali owes Reyes a debt of gratitude for the help he gave her years earlier when she was dealing with a troubled friend. When she’s summoned to his bedside at Physicians Medical Center in Tucson, she can't turn away.

The bloody corpses in the broom closet of a Seattle School District building looked like a classic crime of passion, but 20-year-old clues point J. P. Beaumont to something much more sinister.

As she passes the site of a horrifying accident, Ali is grateful that it's no longer her job to report the news, until she finds out that the news is her own: the victim is Ali's cheating husband. And soon she'll find herself the prime suspect at the center of a terrifying web of evil.

This time, Sheriff Joanna Brady may expect to see her maternity leave through to completion, but the world has other plans when a serial homicide case surfaces in her beloved Cochise County. Rather than staying home with her newborn and losing herself in the cold cases to be found in her father’s long-unread diaries, Joanna instead finds herself overseeing a complex investigation involving multiple jurisdictions.

Since the disbanding of the Special Homicide Investigation Team, JP Beaumont's biggest concern is pondering whether he and his wife, Mel, should finally get a dog. But one voicemail from his old friend Ralph Ames is about to change that. Through Ralph, Beau has become involved in an organization called The Last Chance, which enlists a number of retired homicide investigators to tackle long unsolved cold cases. The one that has just landed on Beau's plate is a 30-year-old missing person case.

The end of her high-profile broadcasting career came too soon for TV journalist Alison Reynolds - bounced off the air by executives who wanted a "younger face". With a divorce from her cheating husband of 10 years also pending, there is nothing keeping her in L.A. any longer.

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.

From New York Times bestselling author J. A. Jance, a suspenseful mystery from the creator of Arizona sheriff Joanna Brady and Seattle homicide detective J. P. Beaumont.Getting old is hell. J. P. Beaumont is finally taking some time off to have knee-replacement surgery. But instead of taking his mind off work, the operation plunges him into one of the most perplexing and mind-blowing mysteries he's ever faced.

At first glance, the video appears to be showing a childish game: a teenage girl with dark wavy hair smiles for the camera, a blue scarf tied around her neck. All of a sudden things turn murderous, and the girl ends up dead. It’s as bad as a snuff film can get, and what’s worse, the clip has been discovered on a phone that belongs to the grandson of Washington State’s governor. However, the boy, who has a troubled background, swears that he’s never seen the victim before.

The investigation of LaShawn Tompkins's murder seemed straightforward enough. Upon his release from death row, the ex-drug-dealer returned to his old neighborhood where he was gunned down on his mother's doorstep. Just another case of turf warfare. At least that's what it looks like on the surface to Seattle investigator J. P. Beaumont, who's been handed the assignment under the strictest confidence.

New York Times bestselling author J.A. Jance brings her two best-loved series characters together as Beaumont and Brady investigate a pair of cases that cross state linesSeattle investigator J.P. Beaumont is working a series of murders in which six young women have been wrapped in tarps, doused with gasoline and set on fire. Their charred remains have been scattered around various dump sites, creating a grisly pattern of death across western Washington.

J. P. Beaumont may be an old homicide hand now, but back when he was a rookie working with his first partner, Milton Gurkey—a.k.a. Pickles—things took a turn for the worse.

A pretty, popular teenager never returned from her secret tryst in Skeleton Canyon. Perhaps it was a youthful rage or savage passion that ripped the life from a child of privilege and abandoned her broken body to the cold Arizona night. Or maybe she stumbled onto something terrible, something too dangerous to know. Now dark secrets about a future hideously destroyed are pulling Sheriff Joanna Brady of Cochise County into a lethal nest of lies and greed.