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Summary
Summary
After more than twenty years of distinguished service with the Seattle Police Department, Jonas Piedmont Beaumont is now working for the Washington State Attorney's Special Homicide Investigation Team or, as it's more commonly called, the SHIT squad. But the more things change, the more they stay the same.
An eyewitness to a fifty-year-old murder has just come forward, and Beau has been hand-picked to lead the investigation. While undergoing hypnotherapy, a middle-aged nun unexpectedly recalls the grisly details of a cold-blooded killing she witnessed when she was five years old. Though fear has kept these memories repressed for half a century, they've now risen to the surface to cast a harsh light on a deadly plot that spans two generations. And Beau's caught in the glare, facing a ruthless band of coconspirators willing to go to any lengths to keep their secrets hidden.
But there's more shaking up Beau's world. His former partner, Ron Peters--caught in a bitter child-custody battle--becomes the prime suspect in his ex-wife's vicious murder. A surrogate parent to Ron's three children, Beau must watch helplessly as his friend spirals through an emotional free fall, his life and family torn to pieces. Everywhere he turns, Beau keeps butting heads with an adversary from the Seattle PD with a personal vendetta. And his growing feelings for Melissa Soames--the squad's newest investigator and Beau's unlikely ally--is a distraction that threatens to open painful old wounds and rouse his personal demons.
Filled with all of the Jance trademarks--heart-stopping suspense, deeply drawn characters, local flavor, intelligence, and humanity--Long Time Gone is a crowning achievement in this bestselling author's career.
Author Notes
Judith Ann (J. A.) Jance was born in Watertown, South Dakota on October 27, 1944. She received a degree in English and secondary education in 1966 and a M. Ed. in library science in 1970 from the University of Arizona. Before becoming an author, she taught high school English, worked as a school librarian on a Native American reservation, and sold insurance.
She is the author of many popular mystery series including the J. P. Beaumont Mystery series, Joanna Brady Mystery series, and the Ali Reynolds series. She won the American Mystery Award for Without Due Process in 1992 and for Failure to Appear in 1993. Both of these titles are books in the J. P. Beaumont Mystery series. In 2014, her fiction book, A Last Goodbye, made the New York Times bestseller list.
Random Acts, a title in A Joanna Brady and Ali Reynolds Novella Series, made the New York Times bestseller list in 2016.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Two family tragedies 50 years apart challenge J.P. Beaumont, Seattle investigator for the Washington Special Homicide Investigation Team, in bestseller Jance's taut, colorful 17th entry in a series that started 20 years ago with Until Proven Guilty. The state attorney general assigns Beaumont a cold case after a nun, Sister Mary Katherine, reports horrific dreams that indicate a long-repressed memory of witnessing a murder. But he's distracted when the former wife of his best friend, Ron Peters, is killed and suspicion falls on Ron's family, causing havoc. Jance is smart enough not to combine the two disparate cases in anything but locale, but she forces Beaumont to choose between friendship and duty-his relationship with the distraught Peters family forbids him from working their case, but he aches to help. The clever and complex plot line involving the nun shows Jance at her best, revealing a coverup that still threatens after many decades. The Peters plot is a frightening lesson in miscommunication, and though the reader may suspect the murderer early on, the stunning motive is only slowly revealed. While Jance writes without the humor of an Ed McBain or Robert B. Parker, fans of those authors will appreciate Beaumont. Agent, Alice Volpe at Northwest Literary Agency. 15-city author tour. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
The popular series continues as Seattle investigator J.P. Beaumont is faced with a shocking, long-buried case of murder. Jance lives in Seattle and Tucson. A 15-city author tour. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Long Time Gone A Novel of Suspense Chapter One Anyone who is dumb enough to live on one side of Lake Washington and work on the other is automatically doomed to spend lots of time stuck in bridge traffic. Such was the case one January morning as I headed for my job as an investigator for the Washington State Attorney's Special Homicide Investigation Team, known fondly to all of us who work there by that unfortunate moniker, the SHIT squad. I live in Belltown Terrace, a condo at the upper end of Second Avenue in downtown Seattle. My office is sixteen miles away in a south Bellevue neighborhood called Eastgate. That morning's commute was hampered by two separate phenomena, both of which were related to a mid-January blast of arctic air that had come swooping down on western Washington from the Gulf of Alaska. The first traffic hazard was black ice, which had turned most of the minor side streets into skating rinks. Unfortunately, I'm a world-class procrastinator, and the winter weather had snuck up on me while my Porsche 928 was still decked out in summer-performance tires. The other major traffic hazard was mountains--not driving over them, but seeing them. For nine months of the year, the mountains around Seattle are mostly invisible. Hidden by cloud cover, they sit there minding their own business, but when the "mountains are out," as we say around here, and Mount Rainier emerges in all its snow-clad splendor, trouble is bound to follow. Unwary drivers, entranced by the unaccustomed view, slam into the fenders of the cars in front of them, and traffic comes to a dead stop. The frigid air had left the snowcapped mountains vividly beautiful against a clear blue sky. As a result, I-90 was littered with pieces of scattered sheet metal, chrome-trim pieces, and speeding tow trucks. Between ice- and gawker-related accidents, my normal twentyminute commute had turned into an hour-long endurance test. Adding insult to injury was the fact that this was my first morning back at work after a weeklong stay in Hawaii. You'll notice I said stay, not vacation, because it wasn't. I was there as father of the groom. Anyone who's been down that road knows it's no cakewalk. The wedding had come up suddenly when Scott telephoned the day after Christmas to say that he and Cherisse were giving up their long-planned, no-holds-barred, late-summer extravaganza of a wedding in favor of a hastily arranged and low-key affair that would take place on a private beach near Waikiki the second week in January. As plans for the summer wedding had burgeoned out of control, I had been less than thrilled about the way things were going. A lowattendance affair that would consist of bride and groom, best people, and an assortment of parental units was much more to my liking. I did wonder briefly if a misstep in birth-control planning had accounted for this sudden change in plans. That certainly had been the case when I had masterminded my daughter's hasty marriage to her husband, Jeremy. Now, several years and 1.6 kids later, Kelly and Jeremy were doing just fine, and I had no doubt Scott and Cherisse would do the same. So I rented a tux, booked my hotel room and plane tickets, and was on my way. I didn't find out that I was wrong about the unwed pregnancy bit until after I checked into my hotel room outside Honolulu. I had just finished stowing my luggage when Dave Livingston stopped by my room to give me the real story. Dave, by the way, is my first wife's second husband and her official widower. He's also Scott's stepfather and a hell of a nice guy. Right after Karen died, Dave and I both made an extra effort to get along--for the kids' sake. It may have been a phony act to begin with, but over time it's turned real enough. As far as parental units go, Dave and I are all Scott Beaumont has. Dave had flown in from L.A. the night before and had eaten dinner with Cherisse's folks, Helene and Pierre Madrigal, who had arrived on a flight from France the previous day. There are a number of things I didn't learn about Dave Livingston until the occasion of Scott's wedding. For one thing, he speaks French. I have no idea why an accountant from Southern California would be, or would even need to be, fluent in French, but he was and is. In the course of that initial dinner he had sussed out that Pierre, age fiftyseven, had recently been diagnosed with a recurrence of prostate cancer. He and his wife had decided to postpone his next round of treatment until after the wedding. This bit of bad news no doubt accounted for the sudden change in wedding plans, and rightly so. In my opinion, postponing cancer treatment for any reason is never a good idea. Scott and Cherisse were obviously concerned that by summertime his condition might have deteriorated to the point where traveling to their wedding would be impossible. And so I found myself in the middle of a wedding event that was complicated by a family health crisis and confounded by limited communication skills. Unlike Dave, I am not fluent in French. My daughter had thoughtfully sent along a French/English phrase book that she thought might be useful. Unfortunately the usual tourist-focused contents made zero mention of PSA counts or prostate difficulties, so I couldn't have talked to Pierre about his situation even if I had wanted ... Long Time Gone A Novel of Suspense . Copyright © by J. Jance. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Long Time Gone by Harry Chase All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.