Customer Reviews

Birds Of Prey: A Novel of Suspense

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm a die-hard J. P. fan but I was a little dissapointed in this
book.
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.

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.

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......

I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AN AVID READER UNTIL LAST YEAR, WHEN I WAS DIAGNOSED WITH LUPUS AND ADD. I HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO READ ANY FICTION BOOK WHAT-SO-EVER. ALL I COULD MANAGE WERE BOOKS ABOUT MY ILLNESSES. THIS BOOK HAS HELD MY ATTENTION AND LET ME GET BACK INTO MY WONDERFUL READING HABIT. THANK YOU MRS. JANCE FOR A WONDERFUL READ AND A GREAT REMINDER OF HOW MUCH I LOVE SEATTLE.

This was my first J.A. Jance book, and the first book that I have read in a long time. This story is great, I could not put the book down. I look forward to reading more J.P. Beaumont Mystery books in the future. I would definitaly recommend this book to anyone!

I have read all of the J.P. Beaumont books by Jance. I really liked Birds of Prey. It was an interesting to have J.P. in Alaska rather then roaming the streets of Seattle. J.P. is a great character that keeps your attention. Ms. Jance has you guessing the ending right up until the end! I am eager to have more J.P. stories to read - Hurry up and write another Ms. Jance!

For 20 long years, Beaumont has investigated the darkness of human hearts. In his latest adventure he accompanies his grandmother (who is in her 70s) & his AA sponsor (he's even older!) on their honeymoon cruise up the Inside Passage to Alaska.

Beaumont's expecting a few weeks of being pampered &, after he realizes he's one of the most eligible bachelors on board, being pursued. He sets sail with a degree of optimism unusual for him, & then one of his ardent pursuers disappears.

Beaumont is an old friend & as much as I like his life & trials, he needs to get a job! His retirement from the Homicide Division of Seattle's Police is not making full use of his skills.

Beaumont's erstwhile powers of observation are muted by the chorus of other characters & I felt let down with the ending.

Even though Beaumont is now squeaky-clean, I was glad I read BIRDS OF PREY. If you've never met him, I do encourage you to find J. A. Jance's first books about her most famous policeman when he was a rough boozer, a vital force in his department & everso much more interesting!

A retired cop, chaperoning his newly married grandmother on her honeymoon, travels to Alaska on a cruise. Sounds like a pretty old group that nothing much should happen to. However after the first sitting at dinner as the cruise gets underway, our cop hero finds himself stuck in the middle of a group of old friends who may or may not like each other that much even though they are traveling together. When one of the women turns up missing and then is reported to have gone overboard, the suspense begins to pick up. Having taken the same Alaskan cruise, I found the bood a fun read, but the characters could have been a bit more intense. This was my first Jance novel and I will try one more.

A retired cop, chaperoning his newly married grandmother on her honeymoon, travels to Alaska on a cruise. Sounds like a pretty old group that nothing much should happen to. However after the first sitting at dinner as the cruise gets underway, our cop hero finds himself stuck in the middle of a group of old friends who may or may not like each other that much even though they are traveling together. When one of the women turns up missing and then is reported to have gone overboard, the suspense begins to pick up. Having taken the same Alaskan cruise, I found the bood a fun read, but the characters could have been a bit more intense. This was my first Jance novel and I will try one more.

This was my first J.A. Jance novel, and if I had only this to go on, I probably wouldn't read another. Fortunately, other readers here have indicated it may be weaker than her usual work, so I'll give her another shot or two.

First off, what is the reason for the title of the book? Okay, it's set on an Alaska cruise, and birds of prey (such as Bald Eagles) are abundant in Alaska. However, birds are not even mentioned in the book, and, as far as metaphors go, I don't believe any of the murder suspects on board could be thought of as predators.

Second, I didn't believe Beau's explanation for being on the cruise ship in the first place. His newlywed grandma wanted him there in case she or her groom took ill or something. Don't they have medical doctors on board (or in nearby ports) for that very reason? What more could her grandson provide? And even if you swallow that, why would Beau sit at a different table from the octogenarians at dinner? He says it's to give them their privacy, but heck, he's already on their honeymoon cruise with them, and it's not like they're not sitting with a bunch of other people anyway. Jance's explanations for things that have to be a certain way to further the plot are too thin -- I could see right through them. I wish she'd found another way -- surely Beau could have been seated separately due to a cruiseline screw-up or something.

Another thing: Beau takes an immediate dislike to Margaret Featherman, and it's hard to see why. He goes on and on about how obnoxious she is when they meet at dinner the first night (they're seated at the same table). But try as I did to find evidence of her awful behavior, all I could find her doing before Beau expresses his dislike is 1) ask him what he does for a living, and 2) indicate the empty chair next to him and ask if his wife will be joining them. How dare she! Margaret exhibits behavior later that is indeed questionable -- she just doesn't do so before Beau makes up his mind about her.

Finally, the reader who earlier questioned the ability of one victim to fall off a cliff from inside a tunnel was right on the nose. That IS how it happened. I wondered about it myself, but as logistical things are not my strong suit, I doubted my own conclusions.

This book is not without its charms, but it is flawed. I can recommend it, with reservations, to diehard Jance fans who never miss her work, and to readers who are interested in one of the settings (the cruise ship OR Alaska). Jance is not a very descriptive writer, but I enjoyed reading about these places anyway.