Search - Fire and Ice (Beaumont and Brady, Bk 18)

Really enjoyed seeing J.P. Beaumont and Sheriff Joanna Brady in the same book again! The author alternates from one to the other as their investigation of a series of murders proceeds separately. Only at the end of the story does Jance reveal how these investigations come together to solve the mystery. Watching these two solve multiple murders in two separate investigations is fascinating. Loved it.

First Line: Ken Leggett wasn't what you could call a warm and fuzzy guy.

Seattle investigator J.P. Beaumont is working a series of murders in western Washington in which six young women have been wrapped in tarps, doused with gasoline, and set on fire. At the same time, two thousand miles away in the Arizona desert, Cochise County sheriff Joanna Brady is investigating the homicide of a caretaker of an ATV park. A breakthrough in Beaumont's case leads him right to Cochise County, and for the second time (after 2002's Partner in Crime) these two will be working together.

I've read the first two or three books of Jance's Beaumont series and have to admit that I never took to J.P. On the other hand, when I picked up the first book of the Joanna Brady series, it was love at first sight. When Jance first put her two crime fighters together, I was wondering how it would work out. I should've known that with two professionals like J.P. and Joanna (and a consummate writer like Jance), it would go well. Fire and Ice is even better than Partner in Crime.

Until the end of the book, J.P. and Joanna stay in their own jurisdictions to work their cases, and both characters are more comfortable that way. It's interesting to see how the two cases eventually link together.

J.P. seems to have made quite a few changes in his life; so much so that I might just try reading about him again. Joanna's life is the usual hectic blur of being sheriff in a county that's larger than some states, of being the wife of a writer who has to go on book tours, of being the mother of an infant and a teenager. J.P. has always been a bit of a loner. Joanna Brady is surrounded by family and friends and co-workers, many of whom have their own story lines woven seamlessly into the narrative.

In both series, Jance has created characters that, after a few books, can easily feel like members of your own family. Jance's plots are always interesting and flow smoothly, and her settings are close to perfection. Fire and Ice is yet another winner for J.A. Jance. When she stops writing books, I think I'll cry.

I have mixed feelings about this. The first cross-over of JP Beaumont and Joanna Brady was a novelty, so I found their interaction interesting, though I didn't like the way it ended. This second one feels too gimmicky - I'm not sure how I'll feel if Jance continues to do this as it seems she is going to. In Seattle, JP's Special Homicide Investigation Team (I cringe whenever they use the acronym - the joke was amusing at first, but it's way way old now and extremely implausible) are investigating a series of similar murders of 6 women, wrapped in tarps and burned to death. Meanwhile Sheriff Joanna Brady is dealing with the case of a man repeatedly run over in an ATV park. Eventually their cases collide, of course.

While I found the mysteries themselves to be sound, the switching between the two points of view was not done as smoothly as before. I found it confusing (well, more disconcerting really) when POV would change more than once within a chapter, especially since Beau is done in first person and Joanna in third. While that makes it easy to identify, it breaks the flow in reading for me. Also, after throwing the two of them together in Partner in Crime, Jance seems to go out of her way to minimize the contact between them now, which seems like a cop-out after that kiss they shared in the end of the previous book. Granted it was a mistake, for both the characters and the author (in my opinion) but I could have used a little more interaction between the protagonists. And then the ending fell a little flat, not really unresolved, but leaving the reader guessing details about how exactly it all turns out, so kind of hanging. I was a teeny bit disappointed with this, but the mystery was good enough that I am still looking forward to the next book.

got this book for my daughter so I havn't read it she however loves it