Long Time Gone, J.A. Jance

Retrieved from: LPLY
0688138241, 2005
Suggested by: The List
My Ratings: 9 Merit, 9 Interest, 9 Fun

I love this series. The character development has been wonderful to chart over the 18 books Jance has written about Beaumont. I actually thought she was done with this series, so was pleasantly shocked when this crossed my desk to be cataloged a couple of months ago. Of course I reserved it right away.

One of the off-putting parts of long-term series is that the characters don't seem to age, but they move through time rather fluidly. They age with each book (so Beau is probably 6-10 years older than he was a the beginning of the series), but time goes speeding past them. So we readers have had to wait 20 years to go from typewriters and extensive hands-on searches in the government records departments, while Beau has only had to wait those 6-10 years. Weird. The only author I'm aware of who deals with this in 'real time' is Sue Grafton, whose Kinsey Millhone stories find her aging properly in the 1980s, still plodding through microfilm and paper records, nary a http:// in sight.

But anyway, in this book Beau finally exorcises the ghost of his second wife, the wacky Anne. The Jag she gave him is laid to rest, not through choices he makes, but he finally sees the reality of keeping it going would be counter-productive. The case he's working on relies on 'recovered memory' from a 60ish nun who has suddenly rediscovered the knowledge that she witnessed a murder when she was 4 or 5. Finding out the victim and likely killers isn't difficult, but trying to understand why more bodies are turning up now is a bit more challenging. It's not exactly microsurgery to figure out the plot points, but it is a joy to watch Beau trying to protect both his old partner and his new one from his "curse" of endangering anyone who works with him.

His old partner is in the midst of trying to prove his innocence when his first wife is found murdered after stirring up the custody issue in his family. While we are sure from the start that Ron could easily--and cheerfully--have killed her, we know he didn't. So why does all the evidence point to his involvement? Well, the answer involves the same themes as the 50-year-old murder: jealousy, greed, and general meanness and secret-keeping.

Good book. Can't wait for the next one....