Whatever Happened to J. P. Beaumont? 'Cause This Sure Ain't Him
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Author: J. A. Jance
Title: Justice Denied Genre: mystery J. P. “Beau” Beaumont's finally found his niche: no longer under the thumb of the Seattle PD, Beaumont loves his gig as a lead for the Washington Attorney General’s Special Homicide Investigation Team (unflattering acronym notwithstanding). He isn’t so sanguine about his latest assignment, though – chasing down three decades of missing persons files. When the big boss gives him a “very special” assignment supposed to be entirely off the books, Beaumont knows he’ll have a tough time keeping his partner (in more ways than one, wink-wink, nudge-nudge) Melissa Soames out of the loop. Mel has her own version of busywork going, though: checking up on a couple of decades of released sexual offenders. Strange coincidence: Mel's sexual offenders are dying at an unusually high rate, and Beau's sub rosa case involves – you guessed it – the murder of a former con who'd been convicted of sexual assault; wrongly, as it turned out. Beau's got plenty of complications in his life without another visit from the Coincidence Fairy, but there she is: floating around right there between the dying grandmother and the newborn grandson. Good thing Beau has the beautiful, organized, and sexy Mel in his corner – he's gonna need her… after all, he's a clueless male (isn't that synonymous with "Neanderthal"?) and he's about to stick his foot right in it. It's been several years since J. P. Beaumont's last appearance in a J. A. Jance book; 2005's Long Time Gone being his fans' introduction to the S. H. I. T. squad and the beauteous Mel (fifteen years Beaumont's junior, of course). During that time, Jance cranked out a couple of Bisbee, AZ, sheriff Joanna Brady novels; two absolutely execrable things featuring defrocked LA anchorwoman Ali Reynolds; and (forgive me if I'm confused) a Walker clan story. Time was when J. P. Beaumont – hero of seventeen prior police procedurals – was Jance's bread and butter. That was, of course, back in the days before people found out that J. stands for "Judith." This time out, Jance seems to try too hard. With a "ripped from the headlines" DNA lab plot thread, a cold case that has zilch to do with the rest of the plot, and a hackneyed "distaff star chamber" dénouement that this reader could smell coming ten chapters beforehand; Justice Denied becomes little more than a mishmash of plot threads overlain with a heaping helping of male-bashing.
The latest Beaumont installment is a pale shadow of the kind of writing Jance was doing a decade ago; harking instead to the almost vanity-press quality of writing in the Ali Reynolds novels (Edge of Evil and Web of Evil), neither of which is worth the effort to read. The book has basic structural problems: Jance fell prey to an unfortunate urge to give her two protagonists different cases that – "just coincidentally, of course" – end up overlapping. That's not the only shortcoming, either – Beaumont, never the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to reading the female of the species, comes off as a complete boob. For instance, he "doesn't believe in post-partum depression"; and he's insensitive to survivors of sexual assault. Why any woman would spend time with him, much less live with him, would be a complete mystery (if we didn't already know he was a multi-millionaire, I suppose). If you ask me, Jance should've let some of the other writing simmer for a while (with luck, the Reynolds stories would have boiled away entirely). Had she left well enough alone, perhaps this version of Beau wouldn't be a caricature of the J. P. Beaumont of yore. In short, this is not the bight and brash J. P. Beaumont who gained legions of fans; it's a watered-down version served with a side of milquetoast. Fans of Beaumont are advised to let this one slide. Watching an old friend like J. P. Beaumont turned into a quivering mass of stupidity is not a pretty sight. all content copyright © 2014 by scmrak
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