Copyright 2001 by J.A. Jance. Published by Avon Books, an imprint of Harper Collins, New York.
This is the first J.A. Vance mystery I have ever read. This one features J.P. Beaumont, a retired Seattle homicide detective. I guess I jumped into the middle of the series as this is #15 of the 23 Beaumont books Jance has written.
This was a great book to read while on a cruise because the entire book is set on a cruise to Alaska, on the fictional Starfire Breeze. Because the book is over 20 years old and because the cruise industry has evolved over that time, some of the details are dated. But not many. It captures the essence of cruising pretty accurately.
There are two murders here and they seem to be intertwined. In the end they are less intertwined than they first appear but figuring it all out is part of the fun. The first murder is Margaret Featherman, ex-wife of Dr Harrison Featherman who just happens to be aboard the ship for a medical conference. Quite a coincidence, right? Only it isn’t a coincidence – Margaret arranged to take the cruise with four of her closest friends, specifically to annoy her ex and his new wife. She goes overboard before dinner early in the cruise and no one sees it except for a man with Alzheimer’s who spends the day watching the very boring aft camera. No one believes that he saw someone go overboard – except Beaumont. He gets access to the security tapes and verifies that she did, in fact, go overboard. And not accidentally – the security footage is clear enough to see that she has duct tape on her mouth.
Beaumont learns that there are two FBI agents on the ship, posing as a married couple, with the task of both protecting Dr Featherman from a shadowy group called Leave It to God (LITG) who had a list of doctors who were performing cutting-edge procedures that saved lives that would otherwise be lost. Dr Featherman, who had pioneered an in vitro procedure to save genetically flawed fetuses, was on the list.
The second murder was the Alzheimer’s witness who was pushed off a train during an excursion in Skagway. A passenger who was associated with Dr Featherman – and who had benefited from Featherman’s life-saving surgery – was present when that murder occurred. The believe was that LITG had targeted him as well and had pushed the wrong man off the train.
Two interesting murders, some well-drawn characters, a shadowy killer organization, some romance (Beaumont and one of Margaret Featherman’s travel companions), all within the confines of a cruise. Great fun.
It was my first Jance book but it probably won’t be my last.
8 out of 10.