Lying in Wait (J. P. Beaumont Series #12) » (Reprint)

You might call J. A. Jance a true town and country novelist, since she writes one series set in Seattle and one in small-town Arizona as she shuttles between the two in real life. In big-city homicide detective J. P. Beaumont and in small-town sheriff/mom Joanna Brady, Jance has created two mega-popular mystery franchises.

A Seattle fisherman has died badly—bound, tortured and set ablaze aboard his boat on the Puget Sound. And with his death comes disturbing questions . . . and the key to a Pandora's Box of evil that has remained tightly closed for over half a century.

Else Didriksen is no longer the beautiful, troubled teenager who disappeared from detective J.P. Beaumont's life thirty years earlier. Now she is a homicide victim's widow-frightened, desperate and trapped in a web of murderous greed that reaches out from a time of unrelenting terror. And the dark, deadly secrets that hold Else prisoner threaten to ensnare Beau and new partner Sue Danielson as well-and to rock their world in ways they never dreamed possible.

Publishers Weekly

Seattle police detective J.P. Beaumont meets his past in this gripping fourth adventure (after Failure to Appear). Called to the scene of a boat fire, Beau discovers Gunter Gebhardt burned to death and handcuffed to a table, his fingers and toes severed and placed in a pan atop his chest. Berthed nearby is Beau's former schoolmate, Al Torvoldsen, who still carries a torch for Gebhardt's widow, Else, another schoolmate. Before Beau and his new partner, Sue Danielson, can jump to conclusions, however, Gunter's girlfriend is found in her smoldering house, her fingers and toes also chopped off. The only lead Beau and Sue have is the report of a man who fled after being hit by a car near the docks at the time of the boat fire. While trying to locate the injured man, the detectives delve into Else's burned-out marriage, learn about Gunter's devotion to Nazism and meet the Gebharts' alienated daughter, Kari, who links the murder of her father to a German death camp from which a shipment of gold disappeared. Beau and Sue probe Else's high school romance, the missing accident victim and the Nazi connection before they come up with the killer in this red hot, fast-paced story. Author tour. (Sept.)