Ring In the Dead audiobook

I enjoyed this short little story where Beau is visited by the daughter of his first partner, which causes him to revisit and reminisce about an old case. This was my next one in the series to read and when I realized recently that it takes place at New Year's, I knew it would be a perfect book to read on January 1st.

J P gets a visit from the daughter of a former partner, one who has blamed him for her father's death all these years. She finds a diary that goes over the old case and the reason that J P wasn't at fault.

This was a novella on kindle. It is primarily a flashback to his rookie days on Seattle PD. Have read all of this series. Enjoyed them all. I am also reading Second Watch, the newest and it goes hand in glove with Ring in the Dead. Good read.

Having either read all of the J. P. Beaumont series or almost all of them - I have lost track - I wasn't sure how much I would like a book going all the way back to when Beau started in Homicide. I shouldn't have worried. It was a great book, even if it was too short. It was good enough that I read it from start to finish and stayed up way too late in the process.A lady calls Beau and brings him some papers. It turns out to be the daughter of Beau's first partner. Her mother had died and the daughter had been going through her things. She found a book her father had been working on about police life when he died of a massive heart attack five years after he and Beau became partners. It had a section about Beau, so she brought it to him as part of her Eight Step in Narcotics Anonymous (NA). It was a way to make amends, since she blamed Beau for what she thought was Beau being the reason her dad died because her dad stayed on the force after his first heart attack instead of retiring. When she read her father's writing about Beaumont she realized she had been wrong.Beau's first partner in Homicide has the unfortunate last name of Gurkey so everyone calls him Pickles. Beau has spent a couple of years on Patrol and was able to get a position in Homicide when Pickles' partner is kicked upstairs. He works with Watty and Powell for a week until Pickles gets back from vacation. It is interesting to see Watty and Powell at lower ranks than in the other books. They make sure Pickles breaks Beau in well. Pickles is determined to do that and hopes Beau decides to go back to Patrol under the pressure. Beau turns out to be tougher than that and stays.One of Beau and Pickles first cases together turns out to be a murder-suicide. The wife is bed-bound and her husband takes care of her. It turns out he gets cancer and sees no medical support or finances for her when he dies. He doesn't want her to go through that so he shoots her in her bed and then turns the gun on himself. No one notices the grass is tall in the yard, mail and papers haven't been picked up, no one has made an appearance, etc. By the time someone comes to the house he smells the very bad odor and calls the police. The case, such as it is, really affects Pickles because he wonders what will happen to HIS wife and daughter if he were to die right then without much of a pension. So when the first heart attack happens he decides to stay on the force to build up his pension to his wife and daughter are taken care of when he dies. Five years later and the big heart attack happens and he doesn't make it. All this time he never told his wife and daughter that he was staying on the force to provide for them when he died. Without the facts they made the wrong assumption that Pickles stayed on the force working with Beaumont as a partner to help him because of what Beau did for him.One day after work they go to the Doghouse and we learn what it was like in the early days. We also learn where it was supposedly located in Seattle. During dinner Pickles isn't feeling well, (due to an impending heart attack) so he goes outside where he attempts to stop the murder of a waitress who followed two customers out who skipped out without paying for their meal. Pickles pulls out his gun and then realizes he is feeling the symptoms of his first heart attack so he backs up to fall against a wall so he won't have so many injuries. Soon he is on the ground, weapon still out. He cannot function. One of the freeloaders grab's Pickles gun and the waitress is history. He then places the gun in Pickles' hand so the only fingerprints on the gun are Pickles. Since he had gone with Beau to the firing range earlier in the day he had firing residue on his hand also.When Beau hears the shots he runs out of the Doghouse and he sees the waitress has been murdered. The two creeps are long gone. Pickles isn't exactly coherent at this point but Beau with only a little time in the saddle with his partner Pickles, believes he didn't do it. He goes into the restaurant, has someone call 911 for Pickles, and then starts interviewing the witnesses about the two murder suspects and what they were like before they left the Doghouse. The ambulance takes Pickles to the hospital, where he is admitted, and Internal Affairs plans to charge Pickles with murder just as soon as he is discharged from the hospital.The book wasn’t just a detective solving a case, it was J.P. Beaumont, a recently minted detective who is trying to solve a case that his new partner could take the fall for, and time is running out.This was a very good book. As I said above, it was good enough that I read it from start to finish and stayed up way too late in the process. I found the murder-suicide portion very realistic. The only thing that bugged me in the book WAS the murder-suicide part, but it bugged me for personal reasons. It hit a little too close to home. I would never kill my wife and I hope I would never commit suicide. We just celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary last weekend and are looking forward to many more loving anniversaries to come. However, my wife is mostly bed-bound and I have quite a number of painful medical problems. We have discussions on how we are going to prepare for the others welfare if we go first, but we haven't come to a completely satisfactory plan yet.I am so looking forward to the next J P Beaumont novel coming out in paperback.

Jance is a matriarch in the world of detective novels, or in this case, the novella. She has four different series that she prodigiously juggles and maintains. The others take place in Arizona and don’t interest me as much as this series, her first, whose protagonist is a Seattle cop named JP Beaumont.It takes a good writer to make me buy the premise here, namely that the SPD are mostly hard-working, good-hearted citizens who joined the police department out of a sense of civic duty. The reality is very different; Seattle’s cop force was recently named the most violent in the entire USA. Cops here are legendary for their gratuitous use of brute force. They develop vendettas against individual citizens. My own middle-class neighborhood recently met with the chief of police to let him know that we are comfortable policing ourselves, and he can take those cops he says are too few to do the job, and assign them somewhere else. Anywhere else. Please. Just get them out of here!So while the FBI knocks its collective head against the brick wall of SPD intransigence, trying to find some way to rein in these mad dogs before the city goes completely nuts and becomes another Ferguson, I read this engaging little novella, and for the brief time it lasted—a single evening—I could forget reality and buy Jance’s premise of brother officers doing good things. That isn’t easy to do.The fifth star is denied simply because of the brevity of the work. There must surely be a definition that separates the short story from the novella, but I am darned if I know what it is. When reading a digital work it’s not a bad idea to skip to the ending first, so you’ll know when it’s coming. I was glad I did that, because this one ended 67% of the way through its brief length. A full third of its space was devoted to plugging another novel. (I was too annoyed by this to remember the title of the work-to-come, so I guess the teaser didn’t work for me.)The novella focuses on a long-ago case when Beau was a newly-promoted detective. His partner, known as Pickles, died of a heart attack, and his daughter found some papers when she was cleaning out the family home. She comes to talk to Beau and to give him the papers, which relate to a case he had worked. In a nut shell, the story reminds us that time is short, and that we should spend ours on things that count.I look forward to Jance’s next Beaumont novel. I just hope it’s full length. I obtained this novella from our public library, but if I had paid for it, I would have felt robbed. Get it free or cheap, or keep your plastic put away.

This is a short story/novella featuring J.P. Beaumont. This was a July 2013 release.Beaumont is contacted by one of his old partner's daughter. She found some old papers in the basement of her childhood home after her mother passed away and thought Beaumont would like to have them."Pickles" was Beaumont's first partner when he was promoted to homicide. The two of them got off to a rocky start, but had a good five year run together before Pickles died of a heart attack.When Beaumont begins to read the memoirs of Pickles, it takes him back to a case that almost ended Pickles life and career and how Beaumont helped him through a bad time.After walking down memory lane, Beaumont is reminded of the important things in life.I love Beaumont. He is my favorite character of the three series by J.A. Jance. Now that Beaumont is getting older, his work is different and his life has changed a lot since we first met him. So, it was fun to go back and see how Beaumont was when he first joined homicide. This is prelude to the new full length novel- "Second Watch". There are a few chapters included at the end of this story. I'm looking forward to it!Over all a B+

This is a later book read out of order. It is very short, only 67 pages. Although written later in the series it is a look back when Beau first move to the ranks of Detective. It is about his first partner, Pickles Gurkey. This partner put Beau through the ring as he did not want a rookie partner. This all ended some time later with Pickles first heart attack. It story ends on New Years Eve thus the title Ring in the Dead.

This book was great to listen to while driving home. It held my interest and the story-line was great. I did't feel like I was missing any of the story even though it's #20.5. The main character was killer and I loved how the author wrote it in a way that I wasn't board with it. I'll definitely be picking up more books by J.A. Jance. is the first book I've read/listened to from this author and I'm glad I did.

I'm going thru some of the short story's on my to read list ... I enjoyed this little guy. J.P. Beaumont has been a reading friend of mine for awhile. I am familiar with the area of where he lives and Ashland, Oregon where his son lives! So ... I can actually visualize the action in the story. I wish it was longer ... It came to a screeching halt just as I was settling in.

Oh, Ring in the Dead, you came at the perfect time. Since I jumped into the series on book 21, you gave me some quality background (and a few great reasons to love Beau for the crusty curmudgeon he is. I hope that as I go back through and catch up on the back story, I get to have more time getting to know Pickles...an Beau’s families before Mel...although I do enjoy her a ton!

A great read for a 5 1/2 hour airplane trip from Newark to San Diego. Just wish it were longer.A good police procedural where following up on leads solved the crime and a good man was not convicted.

A good NovellaOrdinary I'm not crazy about novellas, but this wasn't bad, in fact I enjoyed it. Of course I like J. P. Beaumont and I feel this the best character of Janice's.

J.P. Beaumont is a memorable character. He is a detective that has heart. This small taste was my second helping and I enjoyed him again. JA Jance is an excellent writer.