Payment in Kind

Rating:
Summary: Any JP book is a good ...........
Review: Any JP book is a good ...book.
Are you kidding get this and all the others, I love JP Beaumount!

Rating:
Summary: Solid entertainment
Review: First I must say in response to an earlier review, no the villian is not revealed early on! I don't know how she knew, but I didn't know until the very end! This was a good book and a fast pace read. I'm not usually a big mystery reader, but I really like Jance's style and most of all I like J.P. Beaumont. He is a great main character.

Rating:
Summary: A solid read, familiar territory
Review: This novel was an airplane read for me--a solid three hour flight plus a few moments at the hotel the next morning to finish it up. The plotting and characterization were solid, but not particularly novel. The "extras" added to the plot are in the main eccentric and interesting, as good mystery cameo players should be. Ms. Jance's protagonist was somewhat disappointing--a suitable sleuth, but some of the backstory just didn't work for me in this one. I'd pick up another Jance if I were in the airport and needed a good read, but I wouldn't go out of my way to locate the rest of this series. What do you get when you cross a dash of Christie, a dash of Hammett, a trace of Paretsky, and a lot of those modern "suburbanesque" detectives....something readable, certainly, but not quite a top flight mystery. If you need a good read, it's here, but it's a flawed work, and the villain is obvious from way too early in.