Proof of Life/J.A. Jance

Review:  Proof of Life/J.A. Jance

New York:  Harper Collins, 2017

Jance is what I would call a local author, originally from Bisbee, Arizona, and she sets the J.P. Beaumont series in Seattle.  Both these locations are places I’ve been, so I wanted to add to my reading of detective fiction based in place.  Unfortunately this one fell flat.  I didn’t find the characters believable.  Only Beaumont was fleshed out.  And this was done through slow-motion shots of his mundane thoughts:  “Amerlia Rourke (man or woman?  I wasn’t sure)….” (186).  “Why the hell didn’t I think of that?”  (60). “I was slightly cranky as I pulled out of the garage…” (274). Here’s a character in need of a strong dose of show, don’t tell.  The sad thing is there were plenty of potentially interesting characters who could have been developed, in particular Beaumont’s wife Mel.  Instead we got to know the dog Lucy in detail.  I’m sorry, but this was a detective novel in need of a crash diet.  

The plots were mundane.  That doesn’t necessarily sink a detective novel.  Readers know most of the tropes anyway.  But the way the meager threads were woven was not very artful.  A lot of the background related to a previous Beaumont book, which was thinly sketched and difficult to relate to.  The Lucy plot dragged on and took up too much time.  And the main plot, involving a series of murders and some gang smuggling, was watery gruel indeed.  There were no colorful descriptions of the smuggling involved.  The evil mastermind, an ethnic Vietnamese woman (University of Washington magna cum laude) appeared only near the end as a cardboard cutout personality.  I guess were were meant to be satisfied with such a meager description of an Asian gang, but it was such a caricature it could have been a comic book.  The only details done adequately were descriptions of Seattle, the reliably wet weather, and the freeways.  

I finished this all the way through, in the Samuel Johnsonian sense.  Mildly entertaining but no more.