BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS:
(Available in Print: COPYRIGHT: (1987) 6/1/1992; PUBLISHER: Severn House Publishers; First Cloth Edition; ISBN: 978-0727843142; PAGES: ; Unabridged.)
(Available as Digital)
*This edition-Audio: COPYRIGHT: 2/19/2008; ISBN: 1581163673; PUBLISHER: Books in Motion; DURATION: 07:42:37; PARTS: 6; Unabridged; FILE SIZE: 222294 KB
Feature Film or tv: I don’t think so.

SERIES:
J.P. Beaumont Book 5

MAJOR CHARACTERS: (Not comprehensive--I was listening rather than reading, so may not have spelled names correctly)
J. P. Beaumont – Seattle Police Department Homicide Squad Detective
Dr. Howard Baker – King County’s Medical Examiner
Allen Lindstrom (Big Al) - Seattle Police Department Homicide Squad Detective (Beaumont’s temporary partner)
Ron Peterson - Seattle Police Department Homicide Squad Detective (Beaumont’s incapacitated partner)
Debi Rush – Dental office receptionist
Tom Rush – Debbi’s husband, a dental student
Dr. Frederick (Fred) Neilsen - Dentist
LeAnn Neilsen – Dr. Neilsen’s wife
Dorothy (Dottie) Nielsen – Dr. Nielsen’s mother
Daisy – Dr Neilsen’s Aunt
Rachel - Dr Neilsen’s Aunt
Larry Martin – Carpet installer with Damm Fine Carpets

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
How I picked it: It was the next as yet unread novel in the J.P. Beaumont series.
A dentist, apparently murdered in his dental chair, is the opening scene. Beau and his temporary partner, Big Al, are present with the county’s ME, Dr. (Doc) Baker; a photographer; reporters; and sundry crime scene personnel. Beau & Al begin doing what they do to discover who the killer is and, in the process, decide said killer probably did the world a favor with this one.
The series continues to hold my interest. I enjoy the characters and the setting—learning some of the history of Seattle.

AUTHOR:
J. A. (Judith Ann) Jance-10-27-1944: Jance is an “American author of mystery novels. She writes at least three series of novels, centering on retired Seattle Police Department Detective J. P. Beaumont, Arizona County Sheriff Joanna Brady, and former Los Angeles news anchor turned mystery solver Ali Reynolds. The Beaumont and Brady series intersect in the novel Partner in Crime, which is both the 16th Beaumount mystery and the 10th Brady mystery.[1] They intersect again in Fire and Ice.” __Wikipedia

NARRATOR:
Gene Engene: “Gene Engene is an award-winning reader with an astounding catalog of audiobooks to his credit. He is best known as J.P. Beaumont in the J.A. Jance mystery series. Gene is a veteran stage actor, director, and is a retired Professor of Drama at Eastern Washington University. Gene Engene Audiobooks at http://www.booksinmotion.com” __Facebook.com

GENRE:
Fiction; Suspense; Mystery

LOCATIONS:
Seattle, WA

TIME FRAME:
Contemporary (1987)

SUBJECTS:
Murder, Domestic Abuse

DEDICATION:
"This book could not have been written
without the help of many different people.
but it is dedicated to three of them:
To Gary,
the finest of Seattle's Finest,
To Carol,
a criminalist who is not a criminologist,
and
To Andrea,
the only real live Woodland Park docent I know."

SAMPLE QUOTATION:
From “Chapter 3””

"Sitting with its end gates wide open, the trailer was parked beside a shaky pile of assorted household goods and boxes. A wooden rocking chair, moving slightly with every hint of breeze, sat next to the trailer’s open end, while nearby two women struggled to load an unwieldy four-poster bed-frame canopy into the trailer. They hadn’t bothered to take it all the way apart.
“Looks to me like Mrs. Nielsen is bailing out and taking all her worldly possessions with her,” Big Al commented as he parked our vehicle as close as he could to the mountain of household goods.
He switched on our yellow hazard lights, and we both climbed out of the car. We had moved only a step or two toward the end of the trailer when a voice exploded from the shadowy interior of the trailer.
“Freeze, sucker!”
The reflex is automatic. We froze, but only for a moment. Clutching desperately for the loaded Smith and Wesson in my shoulder holster, I dove for cover. On the other side of the car Big Al dodged behind the front wheel, groping for his own weapon as he too hit the ground.
“Buddy!” a woman’s voice scolded sharply. “You knock that off right this minute! Do you hear me?”
“Buddy’s a bad boy, Buddy’s a bad boy,” replied a suddenly artificial, singsong voice.
One woman entered the trailer and emerged with a huge multicolored parrot perched jauntily on one shoulder. With his yellow head cocked to one side, he regarded Big Al and me with what seemed to be a lively interest.
The woman, a silver-haired lady in her sixties or seventies, clambered down from the trailer and hurried over to me. She recoiled a full foot when she encountered my drawn .38.
“Goodness gracious! Buddy’s just a harmless bird. You’re not going to shoot him, are you?” she demanded.
Police officers live and die by the unexpected. Response to danger, real or imagined, is reflexive, instantaneous, decisive. Hesitating a moment too long can be crucial. And deadly.
But now as the sudden burst of adrenaline dissipated uselessly in my system, I fumbled sheepishly with my gun. My hand trembled violently. That silver-haired little old lady with her loudmouthed bird had come very close to dying in a hail of bullets. It would have been hell explaining that to a shooting review board.
“No,” I managed with some difficulty. “I’m not going to shoot him. We’re police officers.” I finally succeeded in shoving my Smith and Wesson back into its holster and pulled my identification from my pocket.
I glanced at Big Al, who was also struggling to his feet, his face gray and ashen. It had scared him as badly as it had me. For all the same reasons.
“See what you did, Buddy?” the woman said crossly, turning back to the offending bird. “You caused these nice men all kinds of trouble.”
“Buddy’s a bad boy, Buddy’s a bad boy,” the parrot agreed cheerfully, nodding his head up and down.
A second woman, almost a carbon copy of the first, appeared at the open end of the trailer. Both women wore their hair cut short, with a thin fringe of straight bangs across the forehead—Mamie Eisenhower bangs in my book. Both wore gold wire-rimmed glasses and stood ramrod straight.
“What’s going on, Rachel?” the second one asked briskly, smoothing her gray skirt and stepping to the ground in one easy movement. She was a spry old dame wearing what my mother always called sensible shoes.
“Oh, nothing,” Rachel replied. “Buddy’s up to his old tricks again. He scared these two nice men half out of their wits, but there’s no harm done.”
The second woman shook her head and clicked her tongue. “That bird never did have a lick of sense,” she said.
Rachel turned back to me. “You’ll have to forgive him. Buddy spent his formative years sitting in a living room with his cage next to a television set. He grew up on ‘Police Story’ and ‘Starsky and Hutch.’”
Big Al, getting a grip on himself, made a stab at polite conversation. “How old is he?” he asked.
“Watch it, buster,” warned the bird. “Don’t come any closer.” Al stopped dead in his tracks.
One look at Al’s face as he backed away from that parrot, and it was all I could do to keep from laughing. For two cents I think he would cheerfully have wrung that parrot’s cocky neck.
“Buddy!” Rachel exclaimed, handing the bird over to the other woman, who had come to stand beside her. The three of them made quite a picture, the twin old ladies with the wise-ass bird between them. I surmised the women must be sisters.
“Put him in the car, would you please, Daisy?” Rachel asked.
Without a word, Daisy took the parrot and placed him in the back seat of an old two-toned brown and beige Buick Electra that was hooked to the trailer. As soon as the door slammed shut behind him, Buddy hopped up to the back window and sat there, hunched over, glaring out at us."

RATING:
4 stars.

STARTED READING – FINISHED READING
5-24-2022 to 5-27-22
( )

Odd ( )

Odd ( )

A dentist is found murdered in his own office. Beau and his current partner investigate what at first seems like a slam dunk case. The evidence points them in one direction, straight to an ex-con. And while the higher echelon seem to agree, Beau has his doubts. This mystery was really gripping, with interesting secondary characters. The story arc concerning Beau’s former partner advances as well. The writing in this series just keeps getting better. ( )

Another re-read, this time the fifth book in Jance’s J. P. Beaumont series. Again, not a lot to say about it except it is nice light reading. ( )