Rating: 
Summary: This retired "Beau" really needs to find a job
Review: After many years as a homocide detective with the Seattle PD, J.P. "Beau" Beaumont has now retired. In this addition to the series, he is on a cruise to Alaska as a chaperone to his 86 year old grandmother, Beverly and her 87 year old husband (and Beau's AA sponsor)Lars. Early in the cruise, a wealthy divorcee goes missing and a murder plot is suspected. Beau of course can't relax and immediately gets involved in several plots. There are a number of side plots involving cruise passengers and another murder. Lars' reminiscences of his Alaska days as a fisherman are also quite entertaining. It does seem to be a stretch that Beau as a civilian has as much access to crime scenes as a policeman. He is eager to help and get involved which shows he has not accomodated himself to the role of retired ex-cop.The story proceeds at a fast pace and was entertaining but still was not of the higher quality of some of the earlier J.P. Beaumont series. I look forward to reading Partners in Crime, when Beau works for the Washington State Attorney General's office and teams up with Joanna Brady......
Rating: 
Summary: Good read - interesting setting!
Review: For 20 long years, Beaumont has investigated the darkness of human hearts. In his latest adventure he accompanies his grandmother (who is in her 70s) & his AA sponsor (he's even older!) on their honeymoon cruise up the Inside Passage to Alaska. Beaumont's expecting a few weeks of being pampered &, after he realizes he's one of the most eligible bachelors on board, being pursued. He sets sail with a degree of optimism unusual for him, & then one of his ardent pursuers disappears. Beaumont is an old friend & as much as I like his life & trials, he needs to get a job! His retirement from the Homicide Division of Seattle's Police is not making full use of his skills. Beaumont's erstwhile powers of observation are muted by the chorus of other characters & I felt let down with the ending. Even though Beaumont is now squeaky-clean, I was glad I read BIRDS OF PREY. If you've never met him, I do encourage you to find J. A. Jance's first books about her most famous policeman when he was a rough boozer, a vital force in his department & everso much more interesting!
Rating:
Summary: J.P. Beaumont Needs to come out of retirement
Review: Having read all of the previous J.P. Beaumont mysteies, I couln't wait for the publication of Birds of Prey. The story was well written but the character had changed. While Beaumont was a member of the Seattle Police Department, he was a better than average detective. Judith Jance made each book exiciting and each novel was distinctive in its presentation of the case. Even though the Birds of Prey was well written, just the fact that the reader knew that Beaumont was no longer a member of the force, tended to down play the story. While Jance kept the story moving and gave great attention to unfolding the mystery, I think most of her readers would agree that J.P. Beuamont needs rejoin the force or at least hire out in some form of law enforcement. Hopefully, if Jance writes any more J.P. Beaumont novels the main character will once again be sworn.
Rating: 
Summary: GREAT READ!!!
Review: I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AN AVID READER UNTIL LAST YEAR, WHEN I WAS DIAGNOSED WITH LUPUS AND ADD. I HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO READ ANY FICTION BOOK WHAT-SO-EVER. ALL I COULD MANAGE WERE BOOKS ABOUT MY ILLNESSES. THIS BOOK HAS HELD MY ATTENTION AND LET ME GET BACK INTO MY WONDERFUL READING HABIT. THANK YOU MRS. JANCE FOR A WONDERFUL READ AND A GREAT REMINDER OF HOW MUCH I LOVE SEATTLE.
Rating:
Summary: a little dissapointed.......
Review: I'm a die-hard J. P. fan but I was a little dissapointed in this
book.
Is it just me or has J.P. lost his edge?
I did enjoy the setting in this story line, but felt the author
spent way to much time explaining the main characters background
and not enough plotline.
I remember when I would get to the end of a J.P. Beaumont book with my heart racing and wondering how on earth it would end!
I knew who the killer was almost half way through this book.
Beau needs an infusion of energy, he is getting old.
Rating: 
Summary: Definitely Almost for the Birds !
Review: I'm an avid Jance fan, having read every book she's given us, including her two non-series thrillers, the 14 prior J.P. Beaumont stories and the 6 Joanna Brady tales. I salivated when I learned "Birds" was a return to Beaumont after (according to my notes) a 5-year absence since "Name Withheld". But a tasty meal did not follow. I suspect Jance wrote this book under some sort of pressure -- maybe a tough deadline or something. It's just not her: from too many tertiary characters (like the FBI "couple" that never made another appearance), too much dull setup work (about 300 of the 390 pages before things got going), and some pretty far-fetched ideas (nobody could survive a fall from deck to water on any cruise ship I've been on). In fact, one of the book's potential murders (the train thing) never was resolved -- huh? Obviously I was disappointed. Maybe Jance just can't figure out how to handle a retired JP. If so, I'd urge her to stick with Joanna Brady and let JP ride off into the "overprinted" bin where I fear this book is headed.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing to say the least!
Review: If you are an avid Jance fan and have come to like and expect fast-paced action and lots of excitement from the "Beaumont" books, don't buy this one. I usually can't quit reading a Beaumont book. I've stayed up well past my bedtime on many, many, many occasions because I just couldn't put the book down. I will usually spend hours reading the whole book in one setting. But this book.....well, it just doesn't cut it. I've started and stopped it on several occasions to read something else and only came back to it when I needed "filler" reading. For one thing, several characters have undergone major personality changes. Beverly, who was previously sort of a mousy, quiet, obedient character has suddenly become fiesty and mouthy and full of independence. And I scarcely recognized Lars. And the plot is too contrived and the whole Kiksadi, Quicksady, Quixote thing is really stupid. If this is the first Beaumont book you've read, please read some of the older books. You will enjoy them. But don't read this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Crushing Bore: Birds of Prey by J. A. Jance
Review: J. A Jance is a very talented author who created two signature characters. First, there was Jonas Piedmont Beaumont, a Seattle homicide detective. Known to his friends by his initials, J. P., or by the nickname "Beau" he was always in the thick of the action dealing with death in his home city. Then, a few years ago, J. A. Jance created the character of Joanna Brady. Joanna Brady became Sheriff in Desert Heat after the death of her husband. Written in a very different style than the Beaumont books, they allowed the author to try different things. Not only was the location and hero different, the writing style was completely different. After writing several Joanna Brady mysteries, she seems to have lost the ability to faithfully write Beaumont as he was. In the latest Beaumont novel, gone is the third person writing style that had always existed in the Beaumont books. She has switched to first person, which does not work for the character if you have read the earlier novels. Also changed are basic facts about J. P.'s life, which is rather disconcerting to long time fans. Unfortunately, what is left isn't much of a mystery either though the book does run close to 400 pages. As the novel opens, J. P. is on a forced cruise to the Gulf of Alaska aboard the ship the Starfire Breeze. He has agreed to chaperone his recently wed Grandmother Beverly Piedmont Jenssen. She married Lars Jenssen, a fellow member with J. P. of Alcoholics Anonymous. While he is now J. P.'s sponsor in the group, Lars used to be a commercial fisherman and he is very much looking forward to returning to his old stomping grounds in Alaska. J.P. does not have to stay with them, but he is supposed to be there if the elderly couple needs him. At random, he is assigned to a different dinner table and winds up seated with Margaret Featherman. She quickly makes an impression on one and all as a rather unpleasant person. The setup around her is too complicated to go into due to space limitations, but suffice it to say that she soon disappears from the ship. Apparently, she went overboard leaving behind a long list of enemies that had sufficient motivation to kill her. Soon, J. P. is asked to help out with finding out which one of the many people around her did the deed. Both he and the reader are taken on a methodical and tedious ride to the Gulf of Alaska in the search for the killer. Instead of action, old memories and earlier cases are dredged up and examined as well as the personal motivations of all the characters involved. The overall action is very limited with most of the time spent inside J. P.'s head as he ruminates on this situation and others. In short, this effort was a crushing bore for this reader. While it might have helped J. A. Jance take a cruise off of her taxes it should not have been inflicted on the rest of us. Either she needs to quit writing the Beaumont character and just focus on the Brady character, or she needs to go back and read the early stuff so that she can remember how it is done. Hopefully, the next one if there is another Beaumont book, will be better.
Rating:
Summary: Praying for More
Review: J.A. Jance has assembled a very formulaic, almost made-for-tv suspense story. If Jim Rockford had been willing to go on a cruise to Alaska, this thin story could have been filmed thirty years ago.
The characters are stereotypical and the whole plot revolves around clumsy situations of mistaken identity. The protanganist is Beau Beaumont, straight from central casting, a washed-out police detective, who lost his partner and two wives, but appears to be winning a battle with sobriety.
Unfortunately for the reader, but perhaps fortunately for Beau, he agrees to chaperone his ancient grandparents on a cruise. Of course, the trip includes stops in places where his grandfather had fished commercially 50 years ago, and old friends are found on every street corner. Next a murder occurs on the ship, but it is not really a murder, as another of Beau's new forty-something friends seems to have aquatic abilities, on a par with Mark Spitz, and finds her way to safety.
Of course this thing is full to the brim with tales of adultry, jealousy, new love, dementia, substance abuse, domestic abuse, right-wing conspiracy, and seasickness, much of which happened many years ago, or is totally irrelevant to the plot.
Birds of Prey might be suitable for very light beach reading, especially if you have a lot of kids to watch and find it difficult to concentrate, as this does not require much effort. By the middle of the book, you will have it figured out, and be wondering what is taking Beau and Jance so long to wrap it up.
Rating:
Summary: J. P. Beaumont returns
Review: Like an old friend, J. P. Beaumont returns in this latest addition to the J. A. Jance series about the feisty detective. In this book, Beau has retired from the Seattle Police Department, but crimes continue to follow him. He is accompanying his grandmother and her new husband on a cruise ship during their honeymoon. Not wanting to interfere with their privacy, Beau requests dinner seating at another table and manages to end up with four single women and a single man. One of the women disappears and is is soon obvious that several people on the ship have a motive to kill her. FBI agents and security people are working on the case, but as usual Beau is way ahead of them. The background of an Alaskan cruise adds extra appeal to this well-written mystery.
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