J. A. Jance,J. A. Jance

I'm sitting in front of the lake in the little cabin called Sidetrack. Pardon me if I get distracted because the lake's eagles are flying around and doing a little fishing at dusk. Bald eagles nearly ceased to exist in my lifetime. I grew up thinking I'd never see one. But they're back. Right outside my window here and even along the Cannon River in Northfield and around the urban lakes in Minneapolis. Human behavior can make a difference.

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I don't pick up a book by J. A. Jance for great literature. Of course, I rarely pick up a book because it's supposed to be great, or even good literature. That stuff is hard to read. I think I do enough hard work.

If I don't want good literature, what do I want? I want an engaging story that doesn't confuse me -- so it's got to be clearly told. I want to read about primary characters who are interesting and straight forward. The characters can have internal conflicts and self doubts. He, she, or they can suffer from the slings and arrows of forturne, but I don't want to read a story about duplicitous or smarmy people.

Jance

J. A. Jance tells stories well. Her characters are well defined, if not deeply etched in her pages. Her stories are appropriately complex without being unbelievable. (However, several of her characters, like other authors' characters and several TV mystery "stars" are conveniently very wealthy. That wealth makes it possible to "buy" ways out of inconvenient roadblocks, like cross-country or international travel, the need to make a living, or distribution of Franklins for information.

Well, I picked up two books by J. A. Jance in the past several months. Once was a paperback that cost $10.00. The other was a hardback that cost half that. (The second one was in a big bin in the grocery store.)

In the first, Second Watch, I got to check up on the knee replacements that detective J. P. Beaumont got. He's hobbling around pretty well, but his pain-killer-induced dreams seem to be leading him toward finding a killer in a 30-year-old case that was Beaumont's first homicide case. Because of his medications and his handicaps, Mel Soames is a vital part of the case. (I've forgotten whether Mel is J. P.'s latest wife or just his partner. Jance books are forgettable.)

Together, they probe into old open murder cases and new ones that seem to have connections to the things in J. P.'s dreams and his memories of events in Vietnam in the early '70s. It's all sort of believable -- except perhaps for J. P.'s undefined wealth. I remember little fo the details of the story. I remember feeling, "That was pretty good" when I finished.

The other book was Moving Target. The characters in this one are Ali Reynolds and her long-time "butler/caretaker/private secretary" Leland Brooks (guess which of them is unreasonably rich), and Ali's fiancé, B. Simpson. Oh, and a bunch of Leland's friends and relatives from his days as a subject of the queen 50 years ago.

B. gets involved in finding whomever tried to kill a young hacker who had taken down his school district's network. He got help in protecting the young miscreant from Sister Anselm, a taser-carrying nun who was a friend of Ali. Off in the UK, Ali got involved in sorting out the suspicious deaths in a rich family known to Leland. The trails of these deaths went back a couple generations. Both stories were engaging, and inspite of their complexity were not confusing. I recall liking this one better than the previous one.

According to list in Moving Target, J. A. Jance has written 50 books. You've probably read one or more along the way. What did you think of it (them)? Write. Tell this little bit of the world what you think.

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• Author's home page
• Betty's review at Mysterious Review
• Theodore Feit's review at Spinetingler Magazine
• Elise Cooper's review at Blackfive
• Anonymous' review at BookMonster

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One good read deserves another

I finished the C. J. Box book on a good note. The end of the book was its best section. So I was anxious to read some more. Nancy took the first draft manuscript I was working on to Chicago with her, so I couldn't keep revising that. To keep me off the streets and out of the bars, I read some more.

The other book Mary had left for us was a J. A. Jance book, Fatal Error. This Jance book features Ali Reynolds, former LA news reader and a wanna be cop now living in Arizona on a pile of money she inherited from her late husband. (There's a Jance theme: Reynolds and the star of the Jance book I finished not long ago, J. P. Beaumont, are both rich as Croesus because of what they were left by now-dead spouses.)

The Beaumont book, Betrayal of Trust was a great one for me.

This Ali Reynolds book was nearly as great. I did decide to award it one Heart of Gold for improbabilities and I almost gave it a Green Lantern for superheroics.

But, the stories that Jance tells in this book flow so well and are so integrated, that I enjoyed reading it. It even kept me up past my bedtime last night so I could finish it.

The story begins with a former LA rival of Ali's who was also "let go" by a television station becsause mature women don't attract the right audiences for newscasts. Ali's "friend" starts drinking too much, eating too much, and chasing the wrong men too much.

One of the men she "chases" is online, and when she discovers that the online boyfriend is stringing several women along, she decides to expose the guy and begins interviewing the women he's been virtually involved with. The problem is that one of the names on the list she finds is his employer in a scheme to build and sell drone bombers to really bad guys.

The employer is a no-nonsense, heartless crook who begins offing the people involved with the scheme when they're no longer needed. Ali's friend is down the list, but she is on the list.

The murders involve city and county cops all over east LA and central California, so lots of cops get involved. (I did have fun looking at Salton City in Google Earth since that was one of the settings in the book. Man, what a dump -- even from satellite photos!)

Ali, who has finished police academy training, but is not a cop, works with lots of real cops who are suspicious -- especially when she drops a few thou on a private jet to get an off duty homicide detective from one crime scene to another.

There are lots of complicaitons and lots of nooks and crannies in this story, but they fit together so well. (That is what earns the Heart of Gold award for too many coincidences.) Jance tells the stories well, both through dialogue and narration.

J. A. Jance talks about the origins of two of the stories in Fatal Error.

It's such pure entertainment, that I almost feel guilty enjoying the reading so much.

So, have you read Fatal Error by J. A. Jance? or another of Jance's 43 novels? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought of it (them).

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• The publisher's web site
• A review from Kirkus Book Reviews
• Andy Plonka's review from The Mystery Reader
• Liz Nichols' review from The Mystery Maven Blog

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Frustration rewarded

I picked up the last of my birthday cache from book pusher Mary. It was Queen of the Night by J. A. Jance. I'm glad I did, but for quite awhile I wasn't at all sure that I was fortunate to get this gift.

Queen of the Night flowering cactus

Jance's credits page lists 41 previous books. I've read several and been impressed with her characters. I guess she really knows how to structure a plot too. This one is like jigsaw puzzle that is difficult to put together. When I started the book, I had trouble following the story. The book consists of tiny snippets of story and action. Okay, but they aren't consecutive. Each one is carefully labeled with place, day, date, time, and temperature, but that didn't really help me unless I paged back and looked at the labels of earlier snippets. It was frustrating.

Even more frustrating was the huge cast of characters. I stumbled through the first 100 (of 350) pages. But there were interesting people and intriguing mysteries that made me want to continue reading. What I did was go back through the first 100 pages and make a chart of the characters and their relationships.

As you can see, even if you can't read all my scribblings, there are lots of people and lots of relationships. And new characters were introduced after the first 100 pages, too. Not all of them made the chart. This diagram became my reading companion right up to the end. Maybe my old brain isn't as capable as it once was. Maybe I just didn't concentrate enough, but this is supposed to be recreational reading, not academic study. Maybe Jance just created too many characters and too many complications.

I was reminded of the Russian novels that had lists of characters at the beginning. Jance could have helped by making such a list. I also remembered reading Michael Fredrickson's second book, Witness for the Dead, that I read back in 2003. It had a large cast of characters, but something about the way the book was written and how the characters were introduced made it easy for me to keep track of them. (If you look back at that review, done in a pre-blog presentation, you'll find that some of the links are no longer functional.)

Making the chart and referring to it everytime scenes in the book changed, made all the difference for me. I got so I could recognize names and checked the chart for relationships and statuses. From there on the book was great. Reading the last 100 pages kept me awake until nearly 1:00am (long past my usual bedtime).

I'm really glad I made the effort to finish the book. It's really too bad the beginning was so difficult. It's a story full of heroes and villains and family feuds and family loyalties. The story centers on actions -- good and bad, and you know from reading things here that I like good stories. I just wish the story telling had been easier for me to follow.

Have you read Queen of the Night? What was the experience like for you? Write and tell this little bit of the world about your reaction.

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• The publisher's web site for the book
• Kirkus Review on Queen of the Night
• Mary Ann Smyth's review at Book Loons
• Terri B.'s review at Tip of the Iceberg

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Whew!

After slogging through the muck of the rough draft of Mark Twain's autobiography and then working, soporifically, through David Brin's universe of multiple sentients, I was worried I'd never get back to really enthusiastic reading. During the fortnights with Twain's book, I avoided reading. I did crossword puzzles. I played solitaire. I watched TV. I mindlessly surfed the web. I didn't want to go back to that book. During the fortnight with Brin, I kept falling asleep. I was on airplanes and I did come down with a blue ribbon of a head cold, but nonetheless, I kept falling asleep with the book in my hands.

Before I left for California, I not only checked out a book from the library, I also bought one from the best seller rack. Usually, reading a couple books in a week would be no big deal -- even when around little granddaughters. But I never got J. A. Jance's Trial by Fire out of the backpack during the trip.

Yesterday, after writing about my reading experiences with Twain and Brin, I got the book out and began reading.

Yipee! I can still read enthusiastically.

I know, it's mindless eye candy. Jance is an entertainer. She creates identifiable characters. She writes realistic dialogue so the characters talk to each other. Her characters aren't terribly deep, but the main ones were parts of earlier books, so there's background. They react in understandable ways within the realm of what's expected of people. She tells stories that are paced well. All these things are distinct contrasts to the books I most recently read.

I was half way through the book before I put it down last night. This afternoon I finished it. The good guys won again, with some suffering. The bad guys got their due. The scene was set for another story about some of the same characters. I enjoyed the experience. Just like I've enjoyed most of the other Jance books I've read. (She's written 40 so far -- a regular Mickey Spilllane. I don't know how many I've read.)

Trial by Fire considers the ways in which people react to fortune, good and bad. It's not profound, but it's got half a dozen telling anecdotes to relate. If I really wanted to think about it, I could ponder human nature, personality, and fate. But I only got as far as agreeing with the protagonist that I'm damn lucky and very grateful for it. Not everybody is as lucky and some who are aren't grateful. "So it goes," to quote another of my favorite authors.

Trial by Fire is an "Ali Reynolds Mystery." It's good entertainment. Try it out. Or try out something else by Jance. All the ones I've read have been worth the time I spent with them.

Or write and tell this little bit of the world what you think.

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Interstate escapism

Our family book supplier, Mary the banker (for awhile more), dropped another J. A. Jance novel on our shelf not long ago.

I'm in the midst of a political science writing project and I need some escapist reading now and again to maintain my sanity. This book was a great help.

The book Mary provided was Fire and Ice. Like the C. J. Box book, Below Zero, I read recently, I have little clue about the meaning of the title. Fire is a peripheral clue in one of the mysteries in the book. But ice? Well, it snowed in one scene.

Jance included two of her recurring characters in this book. J. P. Beaumont, a Seattle detective is trying to find a serial killer. Meanwhile in Cochise County, Arizona, Sheriff Joanna Brady is investigating the murder of an ATV park caretaker.

Guess what. Clues in the Seattle case connect to people involved in the Arizona case. Beaumont and Brady together again. The last time Jance put them in the same book, I may have groused about a mystery that was really a romance novel. Thankfully, not this time.

Fire and Ice is a pretty good tale of police work. Beaumont and his partner/wife in Seattle and Brady and her staff in Arizona. These are the usual interesting Jance characters in a well-told story, even if it's a bit jumbled. Sometimes it seemed like a hobo stew: Jance seems to have tossed in all the ideas for stories that were floating around in her notebooks and added some seasoning to see what happened.

What happened was good and just the kind of escape I needed once in awhile from the political culture of Iran, centralization in Putin's Russia, and corruption in Nigera. Check the library.

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See also:

• The publisher's web site for Fire and Ice
• Jim Kershner's review at The Spokesman (Spokane, WA)

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Chilling Complexity

J. A. Jance writes entertaining murder mysteries. I wince every time I write something like that. How can a murder mystery be entertaining? The answer has to be that Jance and her "colleagues" write fiction. No one is harmed in the writing, publishing, selling, or reading of her books.

I still get queasy when I spend spare time reading about murders -- even fictional ones. Even the stories that focus on the work of people who try to find the murderers. (At least I'm not parsing the differences between murder, assassination, and killing in battle, like Eric Black did recently in his blog, Eric Black Ink. There was no fiction to hide behind there.)

Cruel Intent is a recent Jance novel set in Arizona. The story surrounds a serial killer who murders women he's seduced and keeps a scrapbook of his kills. Of course, the story is really about the attempts to unravel the devious charade he's built around his obsessions. The book was another gift from our book supplier from Chicago. (Thanks, Mary.)

Jance tells a good yarn. This one gets a little complex technically, but I'm confident she got most of the computer tech right. After this week's revelations about the apparently-Chinese hacker network that could turn on cameras and microphones embedded in computers to eavesdrop on the rooms where the computers were used, nothing in the book is outlandish. Jance's main character is certainly lucky to have such a talented acquaintance, though. In fact, I thought for a bit while reading that it gave her an unfair advantage over the obsessive killer. Of course, the main character is lucky to be alive by the end of the story. She also learned the importance of backing up her data and having good anti-virus software on her computer.

I was entertained by the story and wasn't distracted by improbables, gaps in the story, or ethical doubts about amusing myself with fictional pain, suffering, and death. It's not great literature, but it's better than most of what passes for entertainment on television. (Even though Samantha, who is co-host of Dancing with the Stars, was a student in a class I taught, I haven't been able to watch that "entertainment" since I sat through the very first program to see if the 16-year-old beauty I'd known had turned out to be a grown up beauty. She had. Sorry, Sam, I just can't take the show. I'd rather read a murder mystery.)

Have you read Cruel Intent? Tell us about your reaction.

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See also

• J. A. Jance's web site
• Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum's review at Book Reporter
• A book summary from the publisher

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Messy everyday living in murder mystery

The book pusher in our lives also dropped J. A. Jance's book, Damage Control, on our library table a couple months ago. I read it promptly and liked it, but then it was buried beneath the paperwork for other "jobs" on my desk. The pile on the corner of the desk finally got high enough to force me to investigate. And that's how I found this book today.

Now, what was that book about? Well, it's one of the series that Jance has written about fictional Cochise County sheriff Joanna Brady. Brady's life has gotten more and more complicated with every book. In this one she not only has her domineering mother to deal with, but her older daughter is a teenager. At least her fairly-new husband is a great stay-at-home writer/dad for the baby who recently joined the family.

Then there's an apparent suicide by an elderly couple and the surviving daughters who are at war with each other. Then there are garbage bags full of human body parts washed out of an arroyo. Oh, and there's some suspicion that a group home for vulnerable adults might be run by people as caring as Oliver Twist's boss, Fagin. (What's with these rural Arizonans?)

One of the reasons I like these stories is that Sheriff Brady has a personal life and she deals with bits of it "on screen." She also, like most elected public officials, has to deal with politics and shrinking budgets. And those things are parts of these stories too. There's more than bare police procedures in Jance's stories.

Hooray for all that. Damage Control was a good bit of escapist reading back in December or January (I really can't remember when.) If you've read it and have thoughts about it, write and tell a little bit of the world what you think.

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• J. A. Jance's web site
  
• Kevin Tipple's review at Blogger News Network
  
• Linda Richards' interview with J. A. Jance in January Magazine

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