Author Biography: J.A. Jance is the American Mystery Award-winning author of the popular J.P. Beaumont mystery series as well as eight mysteries featuring Joanna Brady. Born in South Dakota and brought up in Bisbee, Arizona, Jance lives with her husband in Seattle, Washington.

I have now read all of this series and I really enjoyed them. J. P. progressed from an alcoholic (although he was reluctant to admit that) to a recovering alcoholic and he goes through a series of partners along the way, while solving murders, gruesome in some cases. He is a likable character in most ways. (He needs a pet) I like this series better than the Joanna Brady series, which I find a bit predictable. I did really enjoy Partners In Crime, where Joanna teams up with J.P.

ANGEL OF DARKNESS by Caleb Carr

It is June 1897. A year has passed since Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a pioneer in forensic psychiatry, tracked down the brutal serial killer John Beecham with the help of a team of trusted companions and a revolutionary application of the principles of his discipline. Kreizler and his friends - high-living crime reporter John Schuyler Moore; indomitable, derringer-toting Sara Howard; the brilliant (and bickering) detective brothers Marcus and Lucius Isaacson; powerful and compassionate Cyrus Montrose; and Stevie Taggert, the boy Kreizler saved from a life of street crime - have returned to their former pursuits and tried to forget the horror of the Beecham case. But when the distraught wife of a Spanish diplomat begs Sara's aid, the team reunites to help find her kidnapped infant daughter. It is a case fraught with danger, since Spain and the United States are on the verge of war. Their investigation leads the team to a shocking suspect: a woman who appears to the world to be a heroic nurse and a loving mother, but who may in reality be a ruthless murderer of children.

As a boy, Will Klein's hero was his older brother, Ken. Then one night in the Kleins' affluent New Jersey neighborhood, a young woman - a girl Will had once loved - was found raped and murdered in her family's basement. The prime suspect: Ken Klein. With the evidence against him overwhelming, Ken simply vanished, spending the next decade as the elusive subject of rumors, speculation, and an international manhunt. When his shattered family never heard from Ken again, they were sure he was gone for good. Now eleven years have passed and Will, who always believed in his brother's innocence, has found evidence that Ken is alive - even as he is struck by another act of betrayal. His girlfriend suddenly disappears, leaving behind compelling evidence that she was not the person Will thought she was. As two dark dramas unwind around him, Will is pulled into a violent mystery, haunted by signs that Ken is trying to contact him after all these years.

In the stately nineteenth-century homes on Philadelphia's Delancey Street, the wilder passions scarcely ruffle the peace. Murder is unimaginable, particularly a murder involving an upscale book discussion group, of which schoolteacher Amanda Pepper is a devoted member. One day, after a heated discussion of a fictional heroine's suicide, book group member Helen Coulter falls to her death from her roof garden. Helen's death is declared a suicide - a shocking end to a perfect life - but Amanda is skeptical. In the course of recording the group's memories of Helen, inconsistencies and questions arise - and Amanda becomes convinced that Helen Coulter did not take her own life