Description:

From Publishers Weekly

In bestseller Jance's complex, overlong 18th J.P. Beaumont novel (after Long Time Gone), the Seattle special homicide investigator works three cases simultaneously. The first involves the murder of a wrongly imprisoned ex-con, the second the disappearance of a whistle-blowing electronics engineer who vanished the day Mount Saint Helen's erupted in 1980, the third the deaths of several former felons. Meanwhile, Mel Soames, Beau's female colleague and lover, looks into the unexplained deaths of recently released sex crimes perpetrators as well as the disappearance of a childhood friend's abusive father. Unbelievably, all Beaumont's and Mel's assignments meld into one, except for the case of the missing engineer. The detectives are helped by the delightful Todd Hatcher, a young forensic economist and statistical analyst, but the exceptionally busy plot, host of characters, incredible coincidences, ignored clues and red herrings add up to a less than stellar effort from the usually reliable Jance. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From

It's been a couple of years since we last saw him (Long Time Gone, 2005), but Seattle cop J. P. Beaumont hasn't changed much. He has the same job, working with the city's Special Homicide Investigation Team; the same girlfriend, fellow investigator Mel Soames; the same straight-shooting, stick-to-it, never-say-quit attitude. Jance's success, not to mention the longevity of the Beaumont series (more than 20 years and still going strong), lies in the strength of her characters and the craftiness of her stories. This one, involving the death of an ex-con, has plenty of twists and more than enough hard-boiled banter to keep fans reading. Pitt, David