Review by Booklist Review
Retired cop J. P. "Beau" Beaumont (last seen in Nothing to Lose, 2022) is used to interesting cases, but this time, it's his personal life that's creating challenges. His teenaged grandson Kyle turns up unexpectedly, telling Beau his mom (Beau's daughter) is getting a divorce because Kyle's dad is a philanderer with a pregnant girlfriend. Kyle thinks his dad is making a huge mistake and that the girlfriend isn't all she seems, so he hopes Beau can investigate. Meanwhile, Beau lands a new case. Matilda Jackson is convinced that her grandson, Darius, a one-time drug addict who'd cleaned up his act, was murdered, but without evidence, the cops closed the case after concluding Darius died of a fentanyl overdose. What Beau uncovers is a shocking series of linked deaths which the cops concluded were overdoses, when they were, in fact, something else entirely. Along the way, Beau helps Kyle discover the painful truth about his dad's girlfriend and finds answers--and closure--not just for Matilda Jackson but for other families as well. Another fine read from the übertalented Jance.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Personal and professional mysteries collide in Jance's gripping 26th outing for J.P. Beaumont (after Nothing to Lose). The private investigator's life is upended when his grandson, Kyle Cartwright, shows up at his home in Bellingham, Wash., and asks to finish high school there. Kyle's father, Jeremy--J.P.'s son-in-law--has been having an affair, throwing their family into turmoil. When J.P. runs a background check on Jeremy's girlfriend, he discovers she's been living under a false identity. Meanwhile, as a favor to a former colleague on the Seattle PD, J.P. takes on a pro bono cold case: two years earlier, Darius Jackson's death was ruled an accidental fentanyl overdose, but his grandmother insisted he was drug-free at the time of his death--a claim possibly supported by an inconclusive autopsy. Soon after J.P. unearths evidence that Darius may have been murdered, he links the case with a string of other suspicious, supposedly fentanyl-related deaths, and starts to fear he has a serial killer on his hands. Jance's balance of pathos and plot, and the effortless way she intertwines the novel's central story lines, proves she's as sharp as ever. Newcomers and longtime series fans alike will be thrilled. Agent: Alice Volpe, Northwest Literary. (Sept.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
As the Covid-19 lockdown looms in 2020, J.P. Beaumont keeps himself busy with two pro bono cases both linked to old teddy bears. Long ago, as a Seattle PD patrol officer, Beaumont gave Benjamin Harrison Weston Jr. a teddy bear to comfort him for the murders of his family members. Now a homicide detective, Weston uses that memory to lean on Beaumont to reexamine the fatal fentanyl overdose of Darius Jackson in 2018. Even though the police closed that death as an accident, Matilda Jackson, Weston's old Sunday school teacher, has always insisted that her grandson was murdered. Beaumont's collaborations with assorted experts and his own eye for detail ultimately lead him to "a serial killer on steroids" who's dispensed lethal overdoses to at least five men with checkered histories and left a posthumous gift of two $100 bills to each of them. In the meantime, Beaumont gets an unscheduled visit from his grandson, Kyle Cartwright, distraught because his parents are divorcing over his father's affair with coffee shop server Caroline Richards, whose colorful past, once Beaumont digs into it on behalf of Kyle as his nonpaying client, turns out to also involve a teddy bear. Although his investigation, which ends up drawing in a legion of active cops, assistants, and an unusually helpful forensic economist, is thorough, conscientious, and continuously absorbing, Beaumont can't help feeling that "the wheels I had set in motion might not turn out well for anybody." He's right to worry, but he's also right to keep pushing the envelope in the strongest of his recent cases. The only false note is the characters' uncannily accurate foresight about the effects of the coming pandemic. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
