Showing results by author "J.A. Jance" in All Categories

A brutal, psychopathic murderer is released from prison - and stalks his prey with intent to kill.

When Ali hires a contractor to help remodel her home, the last thing she expects is a suspected killer. But when the savagely murdered body of Morgan Forester is found by her twin daughters, Ali's contractor, Logan, is the primary suspect. He swears he has nothing to do with the killing--but no one, including Ali's dear friend, Detective Dave Holman, believes him. Can Ali help Logan prove his innocence? Will it cost her a dear friendship...or something even more precious than that?

Ali Reynolds begins the summer thinking her most difficult challenge will be surviving a six-week- long course as the lone 40-something female at the Arizona Police Academy—not to mention taking over the 6:00 AM shift at her family’s restaurant while her parents enjoy a long overdue Caribbean cruise.

In Deadly Stakes, police-academy-trained former reporter Ali Reynolds is contacted to investigate the grisly murder of a gold-digging divorcee on behalf of a woman accused of the crime. Lynn Martinson is dating the dead woman's ex-husband, and she and her boyfriend, Chip Ralston, have been charged. Ali is simultaneously drawn to the case of A. J. Sanders, a frightened teen with secrets of his own.

A survivor of childhood trauma, two marriages, 20 hard years with the Seattle PD, and the bottle, Jonas Piedmont Beaumont has spent far too much time trolling the darker waters of human nature. In the wake of a devastating professional tragedy, he has decided, at long last, to pull the pin. But there is no safety in semiretirement for a man who long ago chose to make a violent world his home.

Homicide Detective J. P. Beaumont had little to go on: a body, definitely male and decidedly dead, with strange little puncture wounds.

New York Times bestselling author J.A. Jance brings her two best-loved series characters together as Beaumont and Brady investigate a pair of cases that cross state linesSeattle investigator J.P. Beaumont is working a series of murders in which six young women have been wrapped in tarps, doused with gasoline and set on fire. Their charred remains have been scattered around various dump sites, creating a grisly pattern of death across western Washington.

Roger McGeary, a brilliant software engineer, has gifted himself with an upscale cruise in honor of his 40th birthday. When he falls to his death from the balcony of his stateroom suite, the incident is quickly declared a suicide. Only his maiden aunt, a tough-as-nails woman who runs a racehorse refuge, refuses to take "case closed" for an answer and turns to Ali Reynolds at High Noon Enterprises to look into the situation.

When Santa Cruz County deputy sheriff Jose Reyes, Ali’s classmate from the Arizona Police Academy, is gunned down and left to die, he is at first assumed to be an innocent victim of the drug wars escalating across the border. But the crime scene investigation shows there’s much more to it than that, and soon he and his pregnant wife, Teresa, both fall under suspicion of wrongdoing. Ali owes Reyes a debt of gratitude for the help he gave her years earlier when she was dealing with a troubled friend. When she’s summoned to his bedside at Physicians Medical Center in Tucson, she can't turn away.

Years after her son’s fatal overdose, grieving mother Rachel Higgins learns that his addiction may have grown out of damage suffered at the hands of a pedophile priest while he was in high school. Looking for vengeance, she targets the Catholic Church’s most visible local figure, Archbishop Francis Gillespie. When the archbishop begins receiving anonymous threats, local police dismiss them, saying they’re not credible. So he turns to his friends Ali Reynolds and her husband, B. Simpson.

A skilled mechanic and certified spitfire, Twinkle Winkleman is as hard as nails; she has to be with a name like hers. Twinkle learned everything there is to know about cars from her time in her daddy’s garage in Anchorage, and when her father dies, she gains ownership of the shop and Maude, her dad’s prized 1973 International Harvester Travelall. Life has not been kind to Twinkle: she grew up without her mother, her daddy’s gone, her ex-husband betrayed her, and her son Tad was killed after a trip to Seattle to handle some “unfinished business.”

The Statfire Breeze steams its way north toward the Gulf of Alaska, buffeted by crisp sea winds blowing down from the Arctic. Those on board are seeking peace, relaxation, adventure, escape. But there is no escape here in this place of unspoiled natural majesty. Because terror strolls the decks even in the brilliant light of day...and death is a conspicuous, unwelcome passenger. And a former Seattle policeman, a damaged homicide detective who has come to heal from fresh, stinging wounds...

When Diana Ladd's daughter is kidnapped, all evidence points to a diabolical killer imprisoned years ago for terrorizing the Ladd family. A sequel to Hour of the Hunter.

Brandon Walker, once the sheriff of Pima County, Arizona, no longer feels he has purpose. A reluctant retiree living in the long shadow of his wife, Diana Ladd, a successful author of true-crime books, he is bored with life. Salvation comes with an invitation to join The Last Chance, an exclusive fraternity of former cops and forensic experts who look into unsolved murders.

In the heat of the Arizona desert, a raging fire pushes temperatures to a deadly degree, and one woman is left to burn. Pulled naked and barely breathing from the fire, the victim has no idea who she is, let alone who would do this to her -- or why. In her hospital bed she drifts in and out of consciousness, her only means of communicating a blink of the eye.

Life has shifted for J. P. Beaumont. After a tragic accident that devastated - and ultimately disbanded - his Special Homicide Investigation Team, he accepts that he has left homicide detection behind at this point, but he has a lot of unanticipated free time on his hands. He's keeping busy with renovations on the new house that he and his wife, Mel Soames, the newly appointed chief of police in Bellingham, Washington, have bought.

J. P. Beaumont may be an old homicide hand now, but back when he was a rookie working with his first partner, Milton Gurkey—a.k.a. Pickles—things took a turn for the worse.

"A semi's gone over the embankment." The call wakes Sheriff Joanna Brady in the middle of the night, but what brings her fully alert is the rest of the story. The driver didn't drift off to sleep and cross the center line - he was shot, multiple times, by someone with serious firepower. And when the truck crashed through the guardrail, its payload wound up scattered all over the road - boxes upon boxes of Legos.

When Ali hires a contractor to help remodel her home, the last thing she expects is a suspected killer. But when the savagely murdered body of Morgan Forester is found by her twin daughters, Ali's contractor, Logan, is the primary suspect. He swears he has nothing to do with the killing--but no one, including Ali's dear friend, Detective Dave Holman, believes him. Can Ali help Logan prove his innocence? Will it cost her a dear friendship...or something even more precious than that?

When Ali's parents lose their life savings to a Ponzi scheme, her father goes to confront his longtime friend and financial advisor only to stumble into the scene of a bloody double homicide. With her father suddenly a prime suspect, Ali and her husband work to clear her father's name while at the same time seeking justice for her parents as well as the scheme's other suddenly impoverished victims, one of who is a stone-cold killer.