J. P. Beaumont (abridged)

Jonas Piedmont Beaumont has had a hard life and learned at a young age how hard life can be. Two marriages, a treacherous battle with the bottle, assorted midlife and moral dilemmas, and a few decades as a homicide detective haven't convinced him otherwise. When Beau and his new partner Sue Danielson are assigned the murder of an elderly woman torched to death in her bed, Beau finds himself distracted by Sue's difficulties at home.

A survivor of childhood trauma, two marriages, twenty hard years with the Seattle P.D. and the bottle, Jonas Piedmont Beaumont has spent far too much time trolling the darker waters of human nature. In the wake of a devastating professional tragedy, he has decided, at long last, to pull the pin...

Rochelle Baxter was an artist recently arrived from Washington State, cruelly cut down in the early stages of a promising career. Now all that remains of her lies on a cold slab in the Cochise County morgue, and Sheriff Joanna Brady knows that murder has once again infected her small desert...

New York Times bestselling master J. A. Jance brings back J. P. Beaumont -- one of the most enduring and endearing characters in contemporary fiction -- in a riveting story about a shocking, long-buried case of murder ... After more than twenty years of distinguished service with the Seattle...