A young woman is wrapped in a tarp, bludgeoned and set on fire in
the middle of the woods in Washington state.
Hundreds of miles away, J.P. Beaumont is whirling on the teacups
with his granddaughter at Disneyland. Beaumont, a hardliner cop and a
former alcoholic, is getting older. He’s happy with his new wife, Mel,
and the millions he inherited from his second wife. But despite his
newfound health and comfort, he won’t shake his tremendous affection
for police work.
He is once again the star of a J.A. Jance novel, Fire and
Ice, a role he’s held since 1985, through 19 books. And once again,
he’s crossing paths with Jance’s other superstar, Arizona sheriff
Joanna Brady, herself the lead character of 13 novels.
Hundreds of miles away from the unfortunate, tarp-wrapped girl, an
ATV enthusiast finds the body of an elderly groundskeeper, and Brady is
called to the scene to investigate. Meanwhile, Beaumont, a proud member
of SHIT (the Special Homicide Investigation Team), is investigating a
series of gruesome homicides of young women—all of whom were
wrapped in tarps and set on fire. But this time, the young woman still
had her teeth—it seems her killer couldn’t bring himself to do
the dirty work of pulling them out—so they are able, after some
stomach-churning autopsy work, to identify her. They find that she was
a reported missing person, the wife of a murdered convict, and the
mother of a teenager who just so happens to be a close relative of one
of Joanna Brady’s friends and colleagues. This means, ultimately, that
there will be a reunion for Brady and Beaumont. The two, who had a
brief flirtation in Partner in Crime, don’t end up spending much
time together, but the branches of these elaborate crimes manage to
spread themselves from Tucson to Washington and back, making for a
gripping and often suspenseful read.
Jance, who splits her own time between Tucson and Seattle, has
always been a master of character. From the subtlest detail—like
Joanna finding a patch of gray hair and deciding it’s more of a badge
of honor than a hallmark of old age, to Beaumont’s decision to go on
those whirling teacups even though he knows it will make him
sick—she manages to reveal volumes through her characters’ words
and actions, rather than deliberate description.
Jance also has a good eye for gender issues in law enforcement.
Brady still struggles to be taken seriously by her male colleagues at
times, and more than feels the strain of working long days when she has
a young child and a husband at home. Beaumont, for his part, has no
problem partnering up with his wisecracking wife, Mel, also a homicide
detective, who often plays good cop to his bad cop—or vice versa.
And despite her often-dismal subject matter (Fire and Ice spends
a brief time dealing with bedsores and elder abuse), Jance somehow
manages to keep her books light and even funny. She doesn’t indulge in
shock tactics to keep her readers attentive; rather, she relies on her
eclectic and amusing cast of characters, who range from the classic
wizened detectives to lighthearted up-and-comers to the random off-the
wall interloper, like the prostitute-turned-millionaire Mama Rose.
Fire and Ice is probably not the best book to start with if
you’re a new Jance reader. The book’s main deficit is the magnitude of
the collection to which it belongs: Predictably, Jance needs to spend a
lot of time recapping; it can seem as though that’s all she does for
the first 100 pages. This may seem like a convenience, but most of the
information clutters the narrative, only to be forgotten in the action
moments later. The series’ depth is part of Jance’s appeal, of course,
and her devoted readers will appreciate the references to the people
and places of books past, but the fact of the matter is that it slows
down the pacing. The book already has a confusing plot, and throwing in
dozens of extra characters makes for a lot of backward
page-flipping.
Even so, the book ends up being a surprisingly easy jaunt, helped
along by Jance’s smooth writing style. Though you may want to pick up a
few of Jance’s oldies first, Fire and Ice is perfect for the
poolside or the treadmill. As a matter of fact, Jance—and her
charismatic creations Beaumont and Brady—could help you train for
a marathon.
This article appears in Oct 1-7, 2009.