J.A. Jance - Moving Target is featured in the HBS Author's Spotlight Showcase

The Showcase is a special feature of the Author's Spotlight. It is designed to highlight Spotlight author's NEW releases and their soon to be released novels.

The HBS Author's Spotlight SHOWCASES J.A. Jance New Book: Moving Target.
J.A. "Judith" Jance is a New York Times bestselling author. Judith returns with her 50th book, the new Ali Reynolds thriller Moving Target. She is best known for the Joanna Brady series and the J. P. Beaumont series.

Moving Target

A Novel -Ali Reynolds

Author: J.A. Jance


AVAILABLE
Amazon


When police academy-trained former reporter Ali Reynolds embarks on a trip to England with her longtime household assistant and right-hand man Leland Brooks, her greatest concern is helping her friend face his long-estranged family. Yet, Ali soon finds herself investigating violent crimes spanning two continents and eras—as vicious attacks unfold in Texas and an unsolved murder from 1950s Bournemouth, Leland’s hometown, resurfaces.

Near Austin, Lance Tucker, an incarcerated juvenile offender and talented computer hacker, is set on fire and severely burned while hanging Christmas decorations in the rec room. Ali’s fiancé, B. Simpson, is founder of the high-tech security company High Noon Enterprises, which helped put Lance in lockup. B. feels obliged to get to the bottom of what happened and, with Ali otherwise occupied overseas, turns to someone else to help out: Ali’s good friend and Taser-carrying nun, Sister Anselm.

Meanwhile, Ali crosses paths with some unsavory characters with plenty to hide when she begins to investigate the decades-old, cold case murder of Jonah Brooks, Leland’s father. The two cases of Brooks and Lance Tucker seem unconnected and faraway at first, separated by time and an ocean—until Ali nearly fatally veers off of an English roadway at the mercy of an unidentified man interested in Lance Tucker’s computer hacking skills. It is clear that B. isn’t the only one captivated by Lance’s ability to surf the “dark web” unnoticed.

With unsolved murders on both sides of the Atlantic, Moving Target finds Ali, B., and Sister Anselm united again in sleuthing—and in mortal danger.

Prologue

Lance Tucker had always hated ladders, but between climbing up and down a ladder in the recreation hall and sitting through another one of Mrs. Stone’s endless GED classes, there was no contest. Climbing the rickety ladder to decorate the nine-foot Christmas tree was definitely the lesser of two evils.

Lance was five months into a six-month sentence at the San Leandro County Juvenile Justice Center facility in the Hill Country some fifty miles northwest of Austin. All his life he had hated having a December birthday—hated having whatever he was getting for his birthday and Christmas lumped into a single gift that never measured up to what other kids got. This year, though, his turning eighteen on December 18 meant that Lance would be out of jail in time for Christmas—out and able to go home. The problem with that, of course, was that he might not have a home to go to.

The last time he’d seen his mother, on visiting day two weeks ago, she had told him that she was probably going to lose the house. She’d finally admitted to him that she’d had to take out a second mortgage in order to pay the king’s ransom he owed in court-ordered restitution. Now that her hours had been cut back at work, she wasn’t able to keep up the payments on both mortgages. Which meant that, most likely, the house would go into foreclosure.

That was all his fault, too. Ears reddening with shame, Lance climbed down the ladder, moved it a few inches toward the next undecorated section of branches, picked up another tray of decorations, and clambered back up.

Don’t think about it, he told himself firmly. What was it the counselor kept saying? Don’t waste your time worrying about things you can’t change.

This definitely fell into the category of stuff that couldn’t be changed. What’s done was done.

He heard a burst of laughter from the classroom. It was just off the dining room. The kids were probably giving Mrs. Stone hell again. He felt sorry for her. She seemed like a nice enough person, and he knew she was genuinely trying to help them. But what she was offering—course work leading up to earning a GED—wasn’t at all what Lance wanted. It had never been part of what he had envisioned as his own future.

A year ago, just last May, his future had been promising. As a high school junior honor student at San Leandro High, Lance had been enrolled in three Advanced Placement classes and had done well on his SATs, coming in with a respectable 2290. With the help of his beloved math teacher, Mr. Jackson, Lance had been preparing to lead his computer science club team to their third consecutive championship for that year’s Longhorn computer science competition.

Now his life had changed, and not for the better. Mr. Jackson was dead. Lance’s mother had told him that San Leandro High had won the Longhorn trophy after all, but without Lance’s help, because someone else was the team captain now. As for doing his senior year in the top 10 percent of his class and getting to wear whatever he wanted to school? That had changed, too. Now Lance found himself locked up twenty-four hours a day and with nothing to wear but orange jumpsuits. The state of Texas offered college scholarships to kids in the top 10 percent of their respective classes, but he wouldn’t be able to take advantage of that, either. Lance was now officially considered to be a high school dropout with an institution-earned GED as his best possible educational outcome. No matter what his SAT score said, trying to get into Texas A&M, or any college, with only a lowly GED to his credit wasn’t going to work.

The problem was that the GED class was the only one offered inside the facility. Some of the other kids were able to take online classes, but since Lance’s sentence stipulated no computer or Internet access, those classes weren’t available to him. His court-mandated restrictions made the GED the only route possible. It was also boring as hell.

Lance had looked at the questions on the sample test. He already knew he could ace the thing in a heartbeat without having to sit through another dreary minute of class. Mrs. Stone probably understood that as well as he did. That was why she had let him out of class yesterday and today. That way he got to deal with the Christmas-tree issue, and she got to look after the dummies. Not that his classmates were really dumb, at least not all of them. Several of the guys spoke no English. He suspected that several of them probably had issues with dyslexia. One of those, a fifteen-year-old named Jason who couldn’t read at all, filled his books with caricatures of Mrs. Stone. The pencil drawings were realistic enough in that you could tell who it was. They were also unrealistic in that Mrs. Stone was usually pictured nude, and not in a nice way.

All of which left Lance dealing with the Christmas tree. It was big and came in four separate pieces. It was old—ten years, at least, according to Mr. Dunn, the grizzled old black man who was in charge of maintenance at the facility. He was the one who had enlisted Lance’s help to drag the tree and the boxes of decorations out of storage.

“No money for a new tree,” Mr. Dunn said. “Not in the budget, but at least I got us some new lights. By the time we took the tree down last year, half those old lights had quit working. We’ll have to restring it before we put it up.”

That part of the project had taken the better part of a day. First they’d removed the old strings of lights. Then they’d taken the new ones out of their boxes and wound them into the branches, carefully positioning the plug-in ends close enough to the tree trunk so that all the lights could be fastened together easily once the pieces were dropped into place. It was time-consuming, tedious work, but Lance liked the careful way Mr. Dunn went about it, his methodical method of testing each new string of lights before letting Lance take them out of the box. “No sense in putting on a defective string that won’t light up the first time you plug it in,” Mr. Dunn muttered under his breath.

The way Mr. Dunn talked as he worked, more to himself than to anyone else, reminded Lance of Grandpa Frank, his father’s father back in Arizona. Lance missed Grandpa Frank, but his grandfather, along with his entire collection of aunts, uncles, and cousins, had disappeared when his parents got a divorce. It wasn’t fair. Just because parents couldn’t get along shouldn’t mean that the poor kids involved had to lose everybody.

Lance’s favorite memory of Grandpa Frank was going with him to the state fair in Phoenix, where he ate so much cotton candy that he ended up getting sick on the Ferris wheel. The attendant had given him hell while cleaning up the mess. At the time, Lance had been beyond embarrassed, but Grandpa Frank had laughed it off. “Look,” he said. “Crap happens. You clean up your own mess, tell the world to piss off, and get on with your life. You want some more cotton candy?”

Lance had not wanted any more cotton candy. Ever. And he wished he’d been able to talk to Grandpa Frank after he got into trouble. His advice probably would have been a lot like some of the things the counselor said, only more colorful. Unfortunately, sometime between the divorce and now, Grandpa Frank had dropped dead of a heart attack or maybe a stroke. Lance didn’t know for sure. If his parents had been able to talk to each other, Lance might have had more information—might even have been able to go back to Phoenix for the funeral—but that didn’t happen. Grandpa Frank was gone without Lance even being able to say goodbye.

“You gonna hand me another string of them lights?” Mr. Dunn asked. “Or are you gonna stand there all day staring into space?”

Jarred out of his Grandpa Frank reverie, Lance fumbled another string of lights out of a box and plugged it in to the outlet. The new one lit right up, just as they all had, but as Mr. Dunn said, “Better safe than sorry.”

“I didn’t know prelit trees could be so much trouble,” Lance remarked.

“They are if you think you can keep ’em forever,” Mr. Dunn replied, “but with budgets as tight as they are, we’re lucky to get the new lights.”

When the tree was finally upright and glowing with hundreds of brand-new multicolored lights, Mr. Dunn studied it for a moment and then shook his head. “Tomorrow’s my day off. Ms. Stone tells me you’re gonna be the one putting on the decorations.”

Lance shrugged. “Fine with me,” he said.

“Before I take off tonight, I’ll leave everything you need in the closet next to my office, and I’ll make sure the guy who comes in tomorrow knows what’s what. The flocking’s looking pretty sorry these days. I got us some glitter and some self-adhesive glue. Before you put on the decorations, spray some glue on the tree and toss some glitter on it. That’s supposed to make it look a little better.”

“Okay,” Lance said. “Will do.”

Mr. Dunn turned to him. “You seem like a good kid,” he said. “Not like some of them other ornery ones. What the hell are you doing here?”

Lance bit his lip. That was the whole problem: He was a good kid. He never should have been locked up here, but he didn’t want to go into it, not with this old man. “Long story,” he said.

Mr. Dunn shook his head sadly. “Aren’t they all!” he said.

Which brought Lance to the next day, when he was working on his own. Marvin Cotton, one of the guards, had opened the door to the closet next to Mr. Dunn’s office. Had Mr. Dunn been there, he for sure would have helped Lance carry all the stuff into the rec room. Marvin was only a couple of years older than Lance. The guy was thick-necked, stupid, and surly, and he probably didn’t have a college degree. He wandered in and out of the rec room from time to time to check on things, without saying a word or even nodding in Lance’s direction. But then there were plenty of guards who acted like that—who treated the prisoners as something less than human.

Rather than worry about Marvin, Lance concentrated on the tree. For as long as he could remember, decorating Christmas trees had been high on his list of favorite things to do. Not this time. At home, they always had a live tree, although his mother usually bought them late on Christmas Eve, when they were already marked down and cheap. That meant that the trees they had were the rejects—scrawny, uneven, and downright ugly, but his mom made sure they always did the decorating together: all four of them, Lance, his mom, and his two younger brothers, Connor and Thad. Connor was only six and believed in Santa Claus. Lance and Thad no longer had that option. At home, decorating the tree was a joyous occasion with laughter and joking around and plenty of popcorn and homemade cookies. Here, although it was a solitary chore, it was preferable to suffering through the agonies of Mrs. Stone’s class.

A few people besides Marvin had come and gone while Lance worked, so he didn’t turn to look when the metal door clicked open behind him. Intent on having lost the wire hanger to one of the Christmas balls, he was staring into the tree branch, trying to find it, when he heard an unexpected hissing from the glue can he had left on the table with the other decorations. Just as quickly, he felt the cold in his legs as the aerosol spray hit, freezing his pant legs to his skin. Lance glanced down then. “Hey!” he demanded. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

All he could see below him was a hand holding one of the spray cans of glue. Then a second hand came into his line of vision. It took a moment for his brain to register what he was seeing. The second hand held a cigarette lighter. Lance had time enough to register the flash of flame from the lighter, then the very air around him seemed to explode in flame. Writhing in pain, he attempted to lean over and pat out the fire on his legs. That was enough to tip the shaky ladder. The next thing Lance knew, he was falling and burning.

Author Genre: Mystery & Thrillers

Website: J.A. Jance
Author's Blog: J.A. Jance - NYT Bestselling Author
Twitter: @JAJance
E-Mail: jajance@jance.com
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Author Description: J.A. Jance is the top 10 New York Times bestselling author of the Joanna Brady series; the J. P. Beaumont series; four interrelated thrillers featuring the Walker family; and eight books featuring Ali Reynolds.

As a second-grader in Mrs. Spangler’s Greenway School class, I was introduced to Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz series. I read the first one and was hooked and knew, from that moment on, that I wanted to be a writer.

The third child in a large family, I was four years younger than my next older sister and four years older than the next younger sibling. Being both too young and too old left me alone in a crowd and helped turn me into an introspective reader and a top student. When I graduated from Bisbee High School in 1962, I received an academic scholarship that made me the first person in my family to attend a four year college. I graduated in 1966 with a degree in English and Secondary Education. In 1970 I received my M. Ed. In Library Science. I taught high school English at Tucson’s Pueblo High School for two years and was a K-12 librarian at Indian Oasis School District in Sells, Arizona for five years.

My ambitions to become a writer were frustrated in college and later, first because the professor who taught creative writing at the University of Arizona in those days thought girls "ought to be teachers or nurses" rather than writers. After he refused me admission to the program, I did the next best thing: I married a man who was allowed in the program that was closed to me. My first husband imitated Faulkner and Hemingway primarily by drinking too much and writing too little. Despite the fact that he was allowed in the creative writing program, he never had anything published either prior to or after his death from chronic alcoholism at age forty-two. That didn’t keep him from telling me, however, that there would be only one writer in our family, and he was it.

My husband made that statement in 1968 after I had received a favorable letter from an editor in New York who was interested in publishing a children’s story I had written. Because I was a newly wed wife who was interested in staying married, I put my writing ambitions on hold. Other than writing poetry in the dark of night when my husband was asleep (see After the Fire), I did nothing more about writing fiction until eleven years later when I was a single, divorced mother with two children and no child support as well as a full time job selling life insurance. My first three books were written between four a.m. and seven a.m.. At seven, I would wake my children and send them off to school. After that, I would get myself ready to go sell life insurance.

I started writing in the middle of March of 1982. The first book I wrote, a slightly fictionalized version of a series of murders that happened in Tucson in 1970, was never published. For one thing, it was twelve hundred pages long. Since I was never allowed in the creative writing classes, no one had ever told me there were some things I needed to leave out. For another, the editors who turned it down said that the parts that were real were totally unbelievable, and the parts that were fiction were fine. My agent finally sat me down and told me that she thought I was a better writer of fiction than I was of non-fiction. Why, she suggested, didn’t I try my hand at a novel?

The result of that conversation was the first Detective Beaumont book, Until Proven Guilty. Since 1985 when that was published, there have been 21 more Beau books. My work also includes 14 Joanna Brady books set in southeastern Arizona where I grew up, and seven Ali Reynolds books, set in Sedona, AZ. In addition there are four thrillers, starting with Hour of the Hunter and Kiss of the Bees, that reflect what I learned during the years when I was teaching on the Tohono O’Odham reservation west of Tucson, Arizona.

The week before Until Proven Guilty was published, I did a poetry reading of After the Fire at a widowed retreat sponsored by a group called WICS (Widowed Information Consultation Services) of King County. By June of 1985, it was five years after my divorce in 1980 and two years after my former husband’s death. I went to the retreat feeling as though I hadn’t quite had my ticket punched and didn’t deserve to be there. After all, the other people there were all still married when their spouses died. I was divorced. At the retreat I met a man whose wife had died of breast cancer two years to the day and within a matter of minutes of the time my husband died. We struck up a conversation based on that coincidence. Six months later, to the dismay of our five children, we told the kids they weren’t the Brady Bunch, but they'd do, and we got married. We now have four new in-laws as well as six grandchildren.

When my second husband and I first married, he supported all of us–his kids and mine as well as the two of us. It was a long time before my income from writing was anything more than fun money–the Improbable Cause trip to Walt Disney World; the Minor in Possession memorial powder room; the Payment in Kind memorial hot tub. Eventually, however, the worm turned. My husband was able to retire at age 54 and took up golf and oil painting.

One of the wonderful things about being a writer is that everything–even the bad stuff–is usable. The eighteen years I spent while married to an alcoholic have helped shape the experience and character of Detective J. P. Beaumont. My experiences as a single parent have gone into the background for Joanna Brady–including her first tentative steps toward a new life after the devastation of losing her husband in Desert Heat. And then there’s the evil creative writing professor in Hour of the Hunter and Kiss of the Bees, but that’s another story.

Another wonderful part of being a writer is hearing from fans. I learned on the reservation that the ancient, sacred charge of the storyteller is to beguile the time. I’m thrilled when I hear that someone has used my books to get through some particularly difficult illness either as a patient or as they sit on the sidelines while someone they love is terribly ill. It gratifies me to know that by immersing themselves in my stories, people are able to set their own lives aside and live and walk in someone else’s shoes. It tells me I’m doing a good job at the best job in the world.


Author's Book List
After the Fire
I’m sure more than a few of the dyed-in-the wool mystery readers are thinking–a book of poetry? What’s she smoking? Why would I want to read POETRY? With After the Fire, you’ll get a no-holds-barred view of the emotional forge that turned me into who I am. If my pen name wasn’t J.A. Jance, I might have to opt for Phoenix Jance, because the person I am today rose from those ashes. After the Fire is my autobiography, but reading it will give you some insights into the origins of some of my characters, too, as well as an understanding about the themes of some of my books. The cover is lovely. It looks like an all-occasion-greeting card for people in tough circumstances, whose lives are being adversely impacted by drugs and alcohol or by the loss of a spouse to death or divorce. It’s also a book that comes with a real message of hope. It would be WONDERFUL, if that little book of poetry managed to outstrip ALL of the publisher’s expectations! And for those of you who do audio books, I spent yesterday recording the audio version of After the Fire, and that should also be available on September 10. That way you can go to a poetry reading in the privacy of your own iTunes account!


Second Watch - A J. P. Beaumont Novel
With Second Watch, New York Times bestselling author J. A. Jance delivers another thought-provoking novel of suspense starring Seattle investigator J. P. Beaumont.

Getting old is hell! J. P. Beaumont is finally taking some time off to have his knee replacement surgery. But instead of taking his mind off work, the operation plunges him into one of the most perplexing and mind-blowing mysteries he's ever faced.

A series of dreams take him back to his early days on the force at Seattle P.D. and then, even earlier, to his days in Vietnam, reminding him of people and events he hasn't thought about in years.

His past collides with his present in this complex and thrilling story that explores loss and heartbreak, duty and honor, and, most importantly, the staggering cost of war and the debts we owe those who served in the Vietnam War, and those in uniform today.


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Judgment Call - A Brady Novel of Suspense
The New York Times bestselling master of mystery and suspense, J.A. Jance—whom the Chattanooga Times ranks “among the best, if not the best”—brings back her enormously popular series protagonist, Cochise County Sheriff Joanna Brady.

With Judgment Call, Jance achieves a new high in crime fiction, as Brady wrestles with her conflicting roles of law officer and mother when her daughter discovers the murdered body of the local high school principal, and the ensuing investigation reveals secrets no parent wants to hear. At once a breathtaking recreation of the rugged landscape of the American Southwest, a moving story of a mother’s concerns for her endangered child, and thrilling masterwork of brutal crime and expert detection, Judgment Call is prime J.A. Jance, a treat for anyone who loves a good cop story wrapped around a superior family drama.


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Deadly Stakes: A Novel - Ali Reynolds
A thrilling mystery from New York Times bestselling author J.A. Jance starring Ali Reynolds, who finds herself working against the police to clear two innocent names…with deadly stakes.

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. He’s the first to find the body in the Camp Verde desert when he goes to retrieve a mysterious buried box hidden by his absent father—a box that turns out to be filled with hundreds of thousands of dollars in poker chips.

When the body of an ex-con is discovered near the first crime scene, Ali struggles to determine if A.J. and Lynn’s cases are related. Though her friends in the police department grow increasingly irritated by her involvement with the cases, Ali must stop a deadly killer from claiming another victim…before she herself is lost in this game of deadly stakes.


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Left for Dead - Ali Reynolds Mysteries
Not even Ali Reynolds is immune to the escalating drug wars just across the border as two ruthless crimes threaten to bring her face-to-face with a cold-blooded killer.

When one of Ali’s former Arizona Police Academy classmates is gunned down and left to die, he is at first assumed to be an innocent victim of the violent drug cartels. But the crime scene investigation reveals there’s much more to the story. Summoned to his hospital bedside, Ali finds it hard to believe he’s mixed up in the drug trade, and she also meets another seriously injured victim—an unidentified young woman, presumed to be an illegal border crosser, who was raped and savagely beaten. Ali is determined to seek justice in both cases. But as she zeroes in on the truth, the real killer is lining her up in the crosshairs. . . .


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Birds of Prey
The Starfire 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 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. Former Seattle policeman J.P. Beaumont—a damaged homicide detective who has come here to heal from fresh, stinging wounds—will find that the grim ghosts pursuing him were not left behind . . . as a pleasure cruise gone horribly wrong carries him into lethal, ever-darkening waters.


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Paradise Lost - A Brady Novel of Suspense
The desecrated body of a missing Phoenix heiress lies naked, lifeless, and abandoned in the desolate beauty and lonely terror of the high desert night. A hideous crime is inviting death once more into Sheriff Joanna Brady's world. But this time the nightmares of her professional and personal lives are intertwining in ways too awful to contemplate, because one corpse is only the first piece in a twisted and sinister puzzle in which nothing seems to fit. And the next item on a killer's bloody agenda may well be Brady's own beloved daughter.


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Exit Wounds - Brady Novels
The intense desert heat has brought horror to a small corner of the Southwest. A body lies lifeless in an airless trailer, surrounded by seventeen others. It is a crime unspeakable in its conception and execution—a nightmare strangely connected to a grisly slaughter in a neighboring state, where the corpses of two women are found tied up, naked, and gruesomely posed on a rancher's land. A day that started out hot has already turned blistering for Joanna Brady, the sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona, for terror has moved into her small town to stay. And the nightmare will not end until she uncovers the roots of a monstrous obsession buried somewhere in the most frightening dark shadows of the past.


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Edge of Evil - Alison Reynold
With a divorce from her cheating husband of ten years pending and her high-profile broadcasting career abruptly ended by TV executives who wanted a "younger face," Alison Reynolds feels there's nothing keeping her in LA any longer. Summoned back home to Sedona, Arizona, by the death of a childhood friend, she seeks solace in the comforting rhythms of her parents' diner, the Sugarloaf Café, and launches an on-line blog as therapy for others who have been similarly cut loose.

But when threatening posts begin appearing, Ali finds out that running a blog is far more up-close and personal—and far more dangerous—than sitting behind a news desk. Suddenly something dark and deadly is swirling around her life. And now Ali is a target…and marked for death.


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Breach of Duty - A J. P. Beaumont Novel
The end of the old woman's long life came suddenly. She died in her home, torched to death by a fiend with an unknown motive. While Seattle is undergoing unwelcome upscale change, it is strictly on the surface, as the Grim Reaper still lives in the shadows of the city. And it falls to Homicide Detective J.P. Beaumont and his new partner, Sue Danielson, to get to the bottom of his latest handiwork. But the trail will lead to places and events that will leave two police officers and their cases shattered—and nothing will ever be the same again.


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Betrayal of Trust - J. P. Beaumont #19
“Murder, teenage bullying, sleazy adults, and good police work add up to another fine entry by Jance.” —The Oklahoman

Betrayal of Trust is the twentieth mystery by New York Times bestseller J.A. Jance to feature Seattle p.i. J. P. Beaumont—and it is another surefire winner from the author the Chattanooga Times calls, “One of the best—if not the best.” When Beau discovers a snuff film recorded on a smart phone—a horrific crime that has a devastating effect on two troubled teens—his investigation unleashes a firestorm that blazes all the way up through the halls of Washington state government. Betrayal of Trust is certain to win this phenomenal crime fiction master (“In the elite company of Sue Grafton and Patricia Cornwell”—Flint Journal) a wealth of new fans while enthralling the army of devoted readers already addicted to the potent Jance magic.


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Payment in Kind - A J.P. Beaumont Novel
A riveting novel of dark secrets and murderous rage featuring Seattle detective J.P. Beaumont from the New York Times bestselling author of Betrayal of Trust

In death, they were entwined like lovers—a man and a woman hideously slaughtered, then stuffed into a closet in the Seattle School District building. But what appears a cut-and-dried crime of passion, complete with an ideal prime suspect, goes deeper than investigating detective J.P. Beaumont could ever have imagined. For an accused betrayed husband is keeping something shocking carefully hidden, a terrifying truth that’s hotter and more sordid than extramarital sex. And some secrets are more lethal than murder.


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Fatal Error: A Novel
New York Times bestselling author J.A. Jance delivers another pulse-pounding tale of suspense where no one is safe from a . . .FATAL ERROR.

Ali Reynolds begins the summer thinking her most difficult challenge will be surviving a six-week- long course as the lone forty-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. However, when Brenda Riley, a colleague from Ali’s old news broadcasting days in California, shows up in town with an alcohol problem and an unlikely story about a missing fiancé, Ali reluctantly agrees to help.

The man posing as Brenda’s fiancé is revealed to be Richard Lowensdale, a cyber-sociopath who has left a trail of broken hearts in his virtual wake. When he is viciously murdered, the women he once victimized are considered suspects. The police soon focus their investigation on Brenda, who is already known to have broken into Richard’s home and computer before vanishing without a trace. Attempting to clear her friend’s name, Ali is quickly drawn into a web of online intrigue that may lead to a real-world fatal error.


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Minor in Possession - A J.P. Beaumont Novel
A gripping story of buried truths, deceit, and sudden, brutal death featuring Seattle detective J.P. Beaumont fromthe New York Times bestselling author of Betrayal of Trust

Minor in Possession

All manner of sinners and sufferers come to the rehab ranch in Arizona when they hit rock bottom. For Seattle detective J.P. Beaumont, there is a deeper level of Hell here: being forced to room with teenage drug dealer Joey Rothman. An all-around punk, Joey deserves neither pity nor tears—until he is murdered by a bullet fired from Beaumont’s gun. Someone has set Beau up brilliantly for a long and terrifying fall, dragging the alcoholic ex-cop into a conspiracy of blood and lies that could cost him his freedom . . . And his life.


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Improbable Cause - A J.P. Beaumont Novel
A spellbinding tale of twisted depravity and blood vengeance featuring Seattle detective J.P. Beaumont from the New York Times bestselling author of Betrayal of Trust

Improbable Cause

Perhaps it was fitting justice: a dentist who enjoyed inflicting pain was murdered in his own chair. The question is not who wanted Dr. Frederick Nielsen dead, but rather who of the many finally reached the breaking point. The sordid details of this case, with its shocking revelations of violence, cruelty, and horrific sexual abuse, would be tough for any investigator to stomach. But for Seattle Homicide Detective J.P. Beaumont, the most damning piece of the murderous puzzle will shake him to his very core—because what will be revealed to him is nothing less than the true meaning of unrepentant evil.


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Dismissed with Prejudice - J. P. Beaumont Novel
A gripping tale of hatred, lies, and deadly traditionfeaturing Seattle detective J.P. Beaumont from the New York Times bestselling author of Betrayal of Trust

Dismissed with Prejudice

The blood at the scene belies any suggestion of an “honorable death.” Yet, to the eyes of the Seattle police, a successful Japanese software magnate died exactly as he wished—and by his own hand, according to the ancient rite of seppuku. Homicide Detective J.P. Beaumont can’t dismiss what he sees as an elaborate suicide, however, not when something about it makes his flesh crawl. Because small errors in the ritual suggest something darker: a killer who will go to extraordinary lengths to escape detection—a fiend with a less traditional passion . . . For cold-blooded murder.


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A More Perfect Union - J. P. Beaumont Novels
A shattering tale of corruption and homicide featuring Seattle detective J.P. Beaumont from the New York Times bestselling author of Betrayal of Trust

More Perfect Union

A shocking photo screamed from the front pages of the tabloids—the last moments of a life captured for all the world to see. The look of sheer terror eternally frozen on the face of the doomed woman indicated that her fatal fall from an upper story of an unfinished Seattle skyscraper was no desperate suicide—and that look will forever haunt Homicide Detective J.P. Beaumont. But his hunt for answers and justice is leading to more death, and to dark and terrible secrets scrupulously guarded by men of steel behind the locked doors of a powerful union that extracts its dues payments in blood.


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Justice Denied - J. P. Beaumont Novel
The murder of an ex-drug dealer ex-con—gunned down on his mother's doorstep—seems just another turf war fatality. Why then has Seattle homicide investigator J.P. Beaumont been instructed to keep this assignment hush-hush? Meanwhile, Beau's lover and fellow cop, Mel Soames, is involved in her own confidential investigation. Registered sex offenders from all over Washington State are dying at an alarming rate—and not all due to natural causes. A metropolis the size of Seattle holds its fair share of brutal crime, corruption, and dirty little secrets. But when the separate trails they're following begin to shockingly intertwine, Beau and Mel realize that they have stumbled onto something bigger and more frightening than they anticipated—a deadly conspiracy that's leading them to lofty places they should not enter . . . and may not be allowed to leave alive.


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With over 22 million books in print, New York Times bestselling author J.A. JANCE returns with MOVING TARGET (February 18, 2014; Touchstone Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster; $25.99 Hardcover; 978-1-4767-4500-8), a new thriller in her popular Ali Reynolds series. 2014 marks Jance’s 30th year as a published author, with Moving Target as her landmark 50th book.

J. A. JANCE is the New York Times bestselling author of the Ali Reynolds series, the J.P. Beaumont series, and the Joanna Brady series, as well as four interrelated southwestern thrillers featuring the Walker family. Moving Target is her 50th book. Born in South Dakota and brought up in Bisbee, Arizona, Jance and her husband live in Seattle, Washington, and Tucson, Arizona. Visit her at www.JAJance.com.

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