Without Due Process

What kind of monster would break into a man’s home at night, then slaughter him and his family? The fact that the dead man was a model cop who was loved and respected by all only intensifies the horror. But the killer missed someone: a five-year-old boy who was hiding in the closet.

I've been reading J.P. Beaumont for years and have never been disappointed in the series. The character has grown over the years and become much more likeable. I will really be sorry to see this series end.

Someone has targeted cops, and a policeman and nearly his entire family has been killed. But the killer missed a five-year-old boy hiding in a closet, and instead, another boy was killed. Now, investigations have hinted that the dead policeman was not the dedicated cop his friends thought he was. Beau’s partner is convinced something is not right in the department, but further digging puts them both in the cross-hairs. It’s another exciting mystery, fast moving, with strong characters and an intricate, well thought-out plot.

I was not impressed with Without Due Process. The story veers off on the wrong path and just seemed to keep going sideways.

Without Due Process by J A Jance

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS:

Print: COPYRIGHT: (1993 per Wikipedia) 1/1/1992; PUBLISHER: William Morrow & Co; 1st edition; ISBN 978-0688114596; PAGES 302; Unabridged (Amazon Hardcover)

Digital: COPYRIGHT: 2006; PUBLISHER: Harper-Collins e-books; ISBN 978-0061760938; PAGES 338; Unabridged (Overdrive, LAPL, Kindle edition)

*Audio: COPYRIGHT: 1/21/2005; ISBN: not included in library details this time; PUBLISHER: Books in Motion; DURATION: 09:14:42; PARTS: 8; File Size: 266554 KB; Unabridged (Overdrive LA County Library)

Feature Film or tv: Not that I’m aware of.

SERIES: J. P. Beaumont Series, Book 10

CHARACTERS: (Not comprehensive)
Jonas Piedmont Beaumont-J.P. Beaumont (Beau)—Seattle Washington Detective
Ralph Ames show more – Beau’s friend and lawyer
Al Lindstrom (Big Al) – Beau’s partner
Sergeant Watkin (Watty) – Seattle Police Sergeant
Captain Lawrence Powell – Seattle Police Captain
Anne Corley – Beaus late wife
Ron Peterson – Beau’s former partner
Amy Peterson – Ron’s wife
Heather Peterson – Ron Peterson’s daughter
Tracie (sometimes spelled Tracy) Peterson – Ron’s daughter
Benjamin Harrison Weston (Gentle Ben) – Al’s former partner
Junior Weston – Ben’s youngest boy

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
How I picked it: I have decided to listen to all of Jance’s books and this was the next one in the series.

What’s it about? Beau’s partner, Al’s former partner is murdered along with his entire family. Had he gone bad and started mixing with the wrong people?

What did I think? Another great, attention-holding episode.

AUTHOR: J. A. (Judith Ann) Jance -- (born October 27, 1944) "Jance was born in Watertown, South Dakota,[2] and raised in Bisbee, Arizona (the setting for her Joanna Brady series of novels). Before becoming an author, she worked as a school librarian on a Native American reservation (Tohono O'Odham), and as a teacher and insurance agent." -- Wikipedia

NARRATOR: Gene Engene -- "Gene Engene is an award-winning reader with an astounding catalog of audiobooks to his credit. He is best known as J.P. Beaumont in the J.A. Jance mystery series. Gene is a veteran stage actor, director, and is a retired Professor of Drama at Eastern Washington University." -- Books in Motion

GENRE:
Fiction; Mystery

SUBJECTS:
Teddy Bear Patrol; Family massacre; Gangs; Police; Seattle, Washington

LOCATIONS:
Seattle, Washington

TIME FRAME:
Contemporary (1993)

DEDICATION:
“To the Teddy Bear Patrol, people who give small comforts to small people”

EXCERPT:
"BACK IN THE NOT-SO-DISTANT AND NOT-SO-GOOD old days, I remember staying up until all hours every April 14 finishing up my income tax returns. It wasn’t because they were all that complicated because there was never that much money. No, the difficulty was always nothing more or less than an almost fatal tendency to procrastinate where income taxes are concerned. Once I had completed the dirty job, likely as not I’d reward myself with a couple of stiff belts of MacNaughton’s.
A few things have changed since then, some of them for the better. For one, I’m trying, one day at a time, to keep away from Demon Rum. For another, thanks to Anne Corley, there’s a hell of a lot more money in my life, and as a consequence, a much more complicated income tax problem. These days, my relations with the IRS are handled by a CPA firm hired and supervised by my attorney and friend, Ralph Ames, whose presence in my life I also owe to Anne Corley. The only thing that hasn’t changed is my tendency to procrastinate.
That’s why, on the evening of April 14, Ralph showed up around eight o’clock, bringing with him my completed but unsigned returns. The ink was still wet. Ralph, who has been through this exercise with me now a time or two, had held a gun to my accountant’s head and insisted that, no, we were not going to file for an extension.
I fixed a pot of coffee, and for a while we sat in my living room window seat, visiting and watching the nighttime boat traffic crisscrossing the black expanse of Puget Sound. Finally, though, Ralph cleared his throat, switched on the table lamp, and handed me the weighty manila envelope. “Time to go to work,” he said.
As I read over the return, I knew better than to expect to get anything back, but when I hit the bottom line and saw that the amount due equaled 80 percent of my annual take-home pay as a homicide detective for the Seattle Police Department, I about hit the roof.
“You’ve got to be kidding! That’s how much I owe?”
Ralph Ames nodded and grinned. “Can I help it if you’re making money hand over fist? We lucked into some very good investments this last year. Stop complaining and write the check, Beau. You can transfer in enough money to cover it tomorrow or the next day.”
First I signed the return, then I reached for the checkbook. With pen in hand I paused long enough to verify that astonishing figure one last time. “What’s the point in working then?” I demanded irritably. “Why bother to show up down at the department day after day?”
Ralph waited patiently for me to finish writing the check. When I handed it over to him, he put both the signed return and the check on the coffee table.
“Good question.” He smiled. “Seems to me I’ve mentioned that very thing to you a time or two myself. You need to lighten up, Beau. Work less, learn to have some fun, maybe even find yourself a woman. That’s an idea. Whatever happened to Marilyn? I haven’t seen her around here for some time.”
Marilyn Sykes, the former chief of police on Mercer Island, had been a sometime thing, someone to chum around with and take to bed occasionally until she up and turned serious on me. With a lucrative job offer from Santa Clara, California, in hand, she had come to me with an ultimatum to either get with the program as in marriage or else forget it because she was leaving. She took the job in Santa Clara.
“She got married,” I said. “Just before Christmas last year. To some big-time electronics wizard down in California. She sent me an announcement.” “You’ll get over her eventually,” Ralph said.
I shrugged. “It wasn’t that big a thing, really.”
Ralph shook his head. “I wasn’t talking about Marilyn Sykes,” he said carefully.
Without another word, I got up and went to the kitchen to get more coffee. Ralph Ames was one of the few people who knew just how big a hole Anne Corley’s death had torn in my heart. It’s not something I like to advertise. Years later, I still don’t much want to talk about it. Not even with Ralph."

RATING:
4 stars

STARTED READING – FINISHED READING
3-7-2023 to 3-11-2023 show less

So far my favorite in this series

So far my favorite in this series

Terrific from first word to last.