2014 USA Fiction Challenge: Alaska

Alaska is the place for our visit in the 2014 USA Fiction Challenge.

Birds Of Prey by J. A. Jance

A J.P. Beaumont Mystery

After 20 years in the Seattle Police Department, J.P. Beaumont has been put out to pasture. The hero of 14 J.A. Jance mystery novels has called it quits after the murder of his partner. But if Beau is out to pasture, what is he doing out at sea? Beau is on the Starfire Breeze, an Alaskan cruise ship, for one reason and one reason only,  to serve as his newlywed grandmother's chaperon. He's also getting mistaken for a gold-digging gigolo by a band of middle-aged divorcées, led by one Margaret Featherman, who carries a grudge against her ex-husband, successful neurosurgeon Harrison Featherman. Is it just a coincidence that Margaret and Harrison are on the same cruise ship? Or that Margaret is doing her best to seduce one of her husband's patients, who in turn has a crush on the good doctor's daughter? But the biggest potential coincidence of all is a horrific one, when Margaret is pushed overboard into the icy Alaskan waters. The only witness to the murder is an Alzheimer's victim. But when Beau starts poking around he discovers that Harrison was himself the target of a conservative medical ethics group with a deadly agenda. As the ship moves slowly amidst the icebergs, Beau finds out that there's a lot hidden under these particular waters.

 Printing History

Written by Judith Ann Jance (1944- )

William Morrow and Company, Inc
copyright  March 2001

The Hearst Corporation

Avon Books, Inc

ISBN 380 71654

January 2002