"Lean forward, grab on, and ride for adventure." So says Library Journal of J.A. Jance's last J.P. Beaumont mystery, Without Due Process. Now Jance's veteran police sleuth is back in Failure to Appear, tracking an insanely clever killer through the well-heeled world of actors, stage folk, and arts patrons. Beaumont doesn't exactly have a simple life, solving murders as one of the Rainy City's finest, staying sober one day at a time, and dealing with...

A bloodstained stiletto heel might seem an unlikely instrument of death but when it's found near an equally bloodstained and very dead man it gives Seattle Homicide Detective J.P. Beaumont the lead he needs and an unnerving feeling that there's more to come.

When the governor of the state of Washington asks him to investigate a snuff film found on her grandson's phone, J. P. Beaumont, no stranger to human depravity, is shocked by this horrific crime and discovers that this murder has much wider implications.

When the body of Pete Kelsey's adulterous wife is found in a broom closet entwined with the corpse of her lover, detective J. P. Beaumont believes Kelsey's plea of innocence but has a hunch that the wronged husband is hiding something else.

"Before he retired, J.P. Beaumont had looked forward to having his days all to himself. But too much free time doesn't suit a man used to brushing close to danger. When his longtime nemesis, retired Seattle crime reporter Maxwell Cole, dies in whats officially deemed to be an accidental fire, Beau is astonished to be dragged into the investigation at the request of none other than the deceased victim himself. In the process Beau learns that just because...