- Paperback: 464 pages
- Publisher: William Morrow; large type edition edition (Feb 8 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0060185627
- ISBN-13: 978-0060185626
- Product Dimensions: 23.4 x 15.5 x 2.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 694 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
After 20 years in the Seattle Police Department, J.P. Beaumont has been put out to pasture. The hero of 14 J.A. Jance crime novels has called it quits after the murder of his partner. But if Beau is out to pasture, what is he doing out at sea? Beau is on the Starfire Breeze, an Alaskan cruise ship, "for one reason and one reason only: to serve as my newlywed grandmother's chaperon."
He's also getting mistaken for a gold-digging gigolo by a band of middle-aged divorcées, led by one Margaret Featherman, who carries an anything-but- featherlight grudge against her ex-husband, successful neurosurgeon Harrison Featherman. Is it just a coincidence (as both claim) that Margaret and Harrison are on the same cruise ship? Or that Margaret is doing her best to seduce one of her husband's patients, who in turn has a crush on the good doctor's daughter?
But the biggest potential coincidence of all is a horrific one, when Margaret is pushed overboard into the icy Alaskan waters. The only witness to the murder is an Alzheimer's victim. But when Beau starts poking around (after mistaken identity issue number two, in which the captain conveniently assumes he's an FBI agent), he discovers that Harrison was himself the target of a conservative medical ethics group with a deadly agenda. As the ship moves slowly amidst the icebergs, Beau finds out that there's a lot hidden under these particular waters.
When Jance concentrates on the mechanics of her story, this Beaumont novel is perfectly entertaining. But when she strives for sentiment (or humor), her style tends toward an aw-shucks ham-handedness. Here's Beau talking about his partner, killed by an abusive ex-husband: "Her sons are orphans, and no amount of psychobabble from Dr. Majors is going to change that. No amount of talking it over and 'getting it out of my system' will alter the fact that Sue won't be there to see her boys graduate from high school or college. She'll never be the mother of the groom at a wedding or have the chance to cradle a newborn grandchild in her arms." If Beau is thinking about coming out of retirement, one hopes he'll stick to the basics. --Kelly Flynn --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Those who found Jance's previous suspense thriller, 2000's Kiss of the Bees, too strong to stomach can rest easy, as this latest is a crowd-pleaser featuring her series character J.P. Beaumont. The retired Seattle homicide detective has joined a luxury cruise to the Alaskan glaciers at the request of his honeymooning octogenarian grandmother, who fears there may be mischief aboard. The unattached middle-aged women at his table assume Beau is along to land a rich widow or divorc‚e. Beau soon finds he has to be particularly wary of the group's formidable ringleader, Margaret Featherman, whose surgeon ex-husband has invented a procedure that vastly improves the lives of brain-damaged patients. When the ship's video monitor later catches Margaret falling to her death off the stern, the only witness is Alzheimer's patient Mike Conyers, who noticed that Margaret's mouth was taped shut. Beau starts a murder investigation centered on Leave It to God, a religious organization whose members believe that "God put sickness and disease on this earth as a lesson in suffering for everybody" and so disapprove of Dr. Featherman's work. When during a port call someone pushes Mike off the back of a mountain railway car, it seems more than coincidence. Jance, author also of the Joanna Brady series, uses the leisurely pace of the cruise for her hero to reexamine past wounds as well as to display his customary dry wit. Travel buffs and Jance fans are in for a great mini-vacation. 5-city author tour; simultaneous HarperAudio and Harper Large Print edition. Agent, Alice Volpe of the Northwest Literary Agency.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
THE BLONDE FIXED ME with an appraising eye that left me feeling as defenseless as a dead frog spread-eagled on some high school biology student's dissection tray. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
THE BLONDE FIXED ME with an appraising eye that left me feeling as defenseless as a dead frog spread-eagled on some high school biology student's dissection tray. Read the first page
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
a little dissapointed.......,
By MrsCDWhite (Kirkland, WA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Birds Of Prey: A Novel of Suspense (Mass Market Paperback)
I'm a die-hard J. P. fan but I was a little dissapointed in thisbook. Is it just me or has J.P. lost his edge? I did enjoy the setting in this story line, but felt the author spent way to much time explaining the main characters background and not enough plotline. I remember when I would get to the end of a J.P. Beaumont book with my heart racing and wondering how on earth it would end! I knew who the killer was almost half way through this book. Beau needs an infusion of energy, he is getting old.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Beaumont Returns after a hiatus,
By
This review is from: Birds Of Prey: A Novel of Suspense (Mass Market Paperback)
Some years ago, a salesperson at a local mystery bookstore recommended a pair of books by an author I had never heard of named J.A. Jance. They were detective novels with a Seattle setting, and they were good police procedural stories. The first one had quite a dramatic ending, and the later ones were very good. I especially enjoyed the laid-back matter of fact writing style of the guy who wrote the books. They are told in the first person, and you can almost hear J.P. "Beau" Beaumont telling you his story. Imagine my surprise five or six years later when the author turned out to be a woman.Jance has turned into a writing machine. She started out doing paperback originals (the publishing version of a movie going straight to video) and has been on the NYT bestseller list in hardback several times, recently. This is the fifteenth in the Beaumont series, and she also has 8 books in a second series, and two stand-alone suspense novels. All throughout, the books are basically even. She has gotten better, but the progress has been very slow. Mind you she started out very good, so it's not like there was a large area for improvement here. And there are the usual slight fluctuations where a book is better or worse than the previous one. The last Beaumont book ended with a tragedy that he wasn't able to prevent, and so this one starts with him having retired from the Seattle P.D. after many years, taking a cruise with his grandmother and her new husband, chaperoning them, so to speak. Naturally nefarious people are on board the ship, and naturally when they try something evil, Beau has to step in and try and stop them. Jance is very good at putting red herrings in, making things seem something that they aren't, etc. The plot does get a little slow, and I wouldn't say this is her best book, but she's good enough that her best is still pretty good.
3.0 out of 5 stars
This retired "Beau" really needs to find a job,
This review is from: Birds Of Prey: A Novel of Suspense (Mass Market Paperback)
After many years as a homocide detective with the Seattle PD, J.P. "Beau" Beaumont has now retired. In this addition to the series, he is on a cruise to Alaska as a chaperone to his 86 year old grandmother, Beverly and her 87 year old husband (and Beau's AA sponsor)Lars. Early in the cruise, a wealthy divorcee goes missing and a murder plot is suspected. Beau of course can't relax and immediately gets involved in several plots. There are a number of side plots involving cruise passengers and another murder. Lars' reminiscences of his Alaska days as a fisherman are also quite entertaining. It does seem to be a stretch that Beau as a civilian has as much access to crime scenes as a policeman. He is eager to help and get involved which shows he has not accomodated himself to the role of retired ex-cop.The story proceeds at a fast pace and was entertaining but still was not of the higher quality of some of the earlier J.P. Beaumont series. I look forward to reading Partners in Crime, when Beau works for the Washington State Attorney General's office and teams up with Joanna Brady......
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