Lying in wait A J.P. Beaumont mystery

Review by Booklist Review

Cop J. P. Beaumont is extremely good at what he does--homicide investigations. And in his latest case, he's better than ever. All those fans who've been eagerly awaiting this one won't be disappointed--it's as intriguing, riveting, and action packed as they've come to expect. This time, Beau tackles a case with its origins in the Nazi death camps of World War II. When not one but two grisly torture-murder victims are discovered in the Seattle area, Beau and his new partner, Sue Danielson, are called in to investigate. Much to Beau's surprise, he finds that one of the victims was married to a former high school classmate, Else Didricksen. What Beau doesn't know is that Else has for years been as much an unwitting victim of the past as her now-dead husband. What's more, the murderer is determined to silence everyone connected to that horrible past--at any cost. Jance has created a suspenseful story that's sure to keep readers involved, and J. P. Beaumont is as attractive, appealing, and endearing as ever. ~--Emily Melton

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

---

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Seattle police detective J.P. Beaumont meets his past in this gripping fourth adventure (after Failure to Appear). Called to the scene of a boat fire, Beau discovers Gunter Gebhardt burned to death and handcuffed to a table, his fingers and toes severed and placed in a pan atop his chest. Berthed nearby is Beau's former schoolmate, Al Torvoldsen, who still carries a torch for Gebhardt's widow, Else, another schoolmate. Before Beau and his new partner, Sue Danielson, can jump to conclusions, however, Gunter's girlfriend is found in her smoldering house, her fingers and toes also chopped off. The only lead Beau and Sue have is the report of a man who fled after being hit by a car near the docks at the time of the boat fire. While trying to locate the injured man, the detectives delve into Else's burned-out marriage, learn about Gunter's devotion to Nazism and meet the Gebharts' alienated daughter, Kari, who links the murder of her father to a German death camp from which a shipment of gold disappeared. Beau and Sue probe Else's high school romance, the missing accident victim and the Nazi connection before they come up with the killer in this red hot, fast-paced story. Author tour. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

---

Review by Library Journal Review

Seattle's most famous homicide cop has a go at another murder case in Jance's new addition to her acclaimed series. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

---

Review by Kirkus Book Review

A particularly gruesome homicide--a fishing-boat captain killed and set afire aboard his boat after each of his fingers and toes has been removed--is only the beginning of the nasty developments in this latest outing for J.P. Beaumont of Seattle Homicide (Failure to Appear, 1993, etc.). There's the witness who nearly ran down a suspicious character fleeing from the scene of the blaze (a hit-and-he-ran); there's a second, land-bound, victim, identified (barely) as Gunter Gebhardt's paramour, Denise Whitney, whose existence would be quite a surprise to his wife even if she hadn't been executed in the same distinctive way; and there's the revelation that Gebhardt's father was an SS guard at the Sobibor extermination camp--a man who may have stolen a fortune in death- camp gold and taken a powder one step ahead of Simon Wiesenthal's people, who tell a tale of a third de-digitized corpse. You might think that Beau, who began the case as the old acquaintance of Gunter's widow and her boating neighbor Alan Torvoldsen and kept tripping over his society connections in the innocent early phases of the investigation, had supped his fill of horrors with the news of Nazi-hunting, but the guilty secrets his cast is hiding turn out to be guiltier still. Jance doesn't write trenchantly enough or plot tightly enough to justify dragging in the Holocaust back-story, but there's no denying the poisonous effects she gets out of it. Brrr. (Author tour)

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

---

Lying in Wait Chapter One I didn't get much sleep that night. I was up early the next morning. Standing on my twenty-fifth-floor terrace, I was drinking coffee when the fall sun came creeping up over the tops of the Cascades. The previous day's rainstorm had blown away overnight, pushed eastward by the arrival of a sudden high-pressure system. The storm had left behind it a layer of low-lying, moisture-heavy fog that clung to the ground like an immense downfilled comforter. Looking out across Seattle's skyline from that height, I found that the city's streets were shrouded and invisible, as were most of the surrounding low-rise buildings. I could hear the muffled sounds of passing cars and buses in the street below, but I couldn't see them. Now and then I could pick out the sound of an individual car churning down the street, its progress marked by the distinctive hum of pavement-destroying tire studs. Here and there across the cityscape, the tops of other high-rise buildings loomed up out of the fog like so many huge tombstones, I thought. Or like islands in the fog. Wasn't that the name of a book? I wondered. No, it was Islands in the Stream. I had never read that particular Hemingway opus. My familiarity with the title came from working countless crossword puzzles. That's what happens when you live alone. Your mind fills up with unnecessary mental junk like so much multipath interference on an overused radio frequency. Just as static on a radio keeps a listener from hearing the words, stream-of-consciousness interference keeps people who live alone from thinking too much. At least it helps. I had brought my grandfather's ashes home with me the night before. Even now, that discreetly labeled metal box was sitting on my entryway table. Sitting there, waiting. Waiting for my grandmother to decide what should be done with it. I had asked her if there was some particular place where she would like the ashes scattered, or did she want an urn? Her answer was that she didn't know. She'd have to think about it. She'd let me know as soon as she made up her mind. Chilled by the damp, cool air, I was headed back inside the apartment for another cup of Seattle's Best Coffee when the phone rang. Beverly Piedmont had been so much on my mind that somehow I expected the call to be from her, but it wasn't. It was Sergeant Watty Watkins, the desk sergeant from the Homicide Squad. "How's it going, Beau? How's your grandmother holding up?" "Pretty well, under the circumstances." "Are you working today, or are you taking another bereavement day?" "I'll be in. Why? What's up?" "We've got a case that just turned up a few minutes ago, over at Fishermen's Terminal--a fatality boat fire. If it's a problem, I can assign it to someone else." "Watty, I told you, I'm coming in. I'll take it. Who'll be working the case with me?" "There'll be an arson investigator from the Seattle Fire Department, of course. As far as Homicide is concerned, pickings are a little thin. Detective Kramer and two of the other guys are off in D.C. for a training seminar this week. I' probably team you up with Detective Danielson.!! I was partnerless at the moment. Both of my last two partners, Ron Peters and Al Lindstrom, had been injured in the line of duty. For the foreseeable future, Ron was stuck in a wheelchair, and Al had just taken a disability retirement. Those two separate incidents had turned me into the Homicide Squad's version of Typhoid Mary. I was beginning to feel like an outcast. For weeks now, I had been working by myself on the cold trail of a twenty-five-year-old homicide. The bullet-riddled skull had surfaced during the hazardous-waste cleanup of an import/export shipping company that had left Harbor Island in favor of cheaper rent in Tacoma. I had pretty well exhausted all possible leads on that musty old case. Frustrated at being exiled to a dead-end case and tired of getting nowhere, I was bored stiff and ready for some action. Sue Danielson is one of the newest additions to the Homicide Squad. Not only is she relatively inexperienced, she's also one of the few female detectives on the team. Still, a partner is a partner. Beggars can't be choosers. "Sue Danielson's fine," I said. "Is she there already? Does she have a car, or should I come down and get one?" "She's right here," Watty replied. "I'll send her down to Motor Pool as soon as I get off the hom with you. She'll stop by Belltown Terrace to pick you up on her way north." "Good," I said. "I'll be waiting downstairs." And I was. Sue pulled up to the curb at Second and Broad in a hot little silver Mustang with a blue flashing fight stuck on the roof. Some poor unfortunate drug dealer had been kind enough to equip the Mustang with a 5.0-liter high-output V-8 before unintentionally donating it to the exclusive use of the Seattle P.D. by way of a drug bust. As I crammed my six-three frame into the rider's side, I wished the bad guy had been taller. Short crooks tend to buy cars that are long on horsepower and short on headroom. "How's it going?" I asked. "Great," Sue said brusquely. I was still closing the door when she gunned the engine and shot into traffic just ahead of an accelerating Metro bus that was lumbering down Second Avenue. Seattle police vehicles are supposedly nonsmoking in these politically correct days, but there was more than a hint of cigarette smoke wafting around in the Mustang when I got inside. Despite the cold, the driver's-side window was rolled all the way down . . . Lying in Wait . Copyright © by J. Jance. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Lying in Wait by J. A. Jance All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

---