Minor in Possession: A J.P. Beaumont Novel

Delving into the mind of someone whose anesthetic of choice is alcohol can be messy. J.A. Jance spares the reader from that, but throws in teenage problems , drugs, crooked cops, a grieving mother and a snake called Ringo. Add the deviant owners of Detective Beaumont's rehab facility and a smart and pretty police officer and you've got a whole lot of story. I enjoyed it. So will you.

Seattle homicide detective J.P. "Beau" Beaumont isn't enjoying his stay at a rural Arizona rehab facility, where his attorney has arranged for him to be treated for alcoholism. He isn't happy about the facility bulldozing his former wife, Karen, to leave her current husband of 10 years and bring their two children - a young adult son and a teenaged daughter - to join the program's family component. He feels naked without the .38 that he left locked in the glove compartment of his rental car, which sits in the parking lot because he's not allowed to leave except on provided transportation to AA meetings. He expecially doesn't enjoy sharing a cabin with 19-year-old Joey Rothman, who's rumored to be dealing drugs from inside the treatment facility. Joey breaks curfew every night, and when Beau spies the boy kissing his own adolescent daughter he decides to wait for Joey in the dark. He's joined that night by an Air Force officer who has an even better reason to want to bash Joey's face in - this man's 15-year-old daughter is pregnant, and she says Joey is the father.

Joey is dead, though. Shot with Beau's weapon. When Beau pushes for answers, and insists on bringing in local law enforcement, the couple who run the rehab facility aren't happy with him; and neither is someone else, who leaves a lethal surprise in his cabin. Soon Beau teams up with his attorney, with Joey's mother (who hasn't had custody of him since his father divorced her and remarried, when Joey was small), and with the Air Force officer whose pregnant daughter wants to have Joey's baby instead of an abortion. All of them want to know who killed the young man, and why. And that means they're all in serious danger.

I wondered how Jance would make Beau's stay in alcohol rehab interesting, or if she would solve that problem by picking up his story after he finished the program and went back to work. I'm glad she didn't dodge, because I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It has plenty of twists and turns, its resolution works well, and Beau's background - both from his boyhood being reared by a young single mother, and from his brief and traumatic marriage to the deceased Anne Corley - proves key to his reactions. I like that kind of character development. Beau is growing and changing while remaining himself, and he's learning how to live without alcohol on his own terms. For me this was an almost nonstop read.

--Reviewed by Nina M. Osier, author of 2005 science fiction EPPIE winner "Regs"

Arizona is the setting for the eighth entry in J. A. Jance's series, Minor in Possession, starring the Seattle homicide detective J. P. Beaumont. I was pleased to find out that the author took Beau to the Grand Canyon State, which is also where the other three of her mystery series are set. In the previous entry, Dismissed with Prejudice, Beau was diagnosed with an enlarged liver resulting from his over-fascination with the Canadian blended whisky MacNaughton's. So, his lawyer, Ralph Ames, arranged for him to go through alcohol rehabilitation at Ironwood Ranch near Wickenberg, a small town in the Sonoran Desert northwest of Phoenix. The plot is played out as the result of the death of Beau's roommate, supposedly by use of the detective's own .38 Smith and Wesson revolver. Jance puts together a fascinating story involving a sizable number of well-defined characters with varying relationship to the deceased. For me, as a professional herpetologist, one of the most interesting plotlines involved Ringo, a captive rattlesnake formerly belonging to the victim. Here all along in the prior novels in this series, I though J. P. Beaumont was a tough-guy homicide dick willing to go up against the bad guys in book after book. However, Jance places our hero in his room at the ranch in the dark with the rattlesnake, forcing him to exit the cabin through the bathroom window wrapped only in a towel. Strangely, at least to me, Beau believes that someone has tried to kill him as a result of death by rattlesnake. The snake in question is presumably the Arizona Black Rattlesnake, Crotalus cerebrus, a striking animal that is distributed through the central mountains of the state, including those associated with the Mogollon Rim. The snake's range, however, lies to the north of the Wickenberg area where Ironwood Ranch is located, and so is not native. Although the snake is capable of delivering a lethal bite, trying to kill someone by loosing it in a room is rather clumsy. After all, even if one is bitten, rattlesnake bites are not immediately fatal and can be dealt with satisfactorily in a properly-equipped hospital setting. Nevertheless, the author allowed her character to react in a stereotypical fashion toward the presence of the snake. Many, if not most people, not being knowledgeable about venomous snakes, resort to ignorance in dealing with them. The assumption is that the snakes are evil, when in fact the snakes generally get the wrong end of the stick in dealing with humans. Evil is a human characteristic that has no counterpart among other creatures in the animal kingdom. Rattlesnakes use their venom to secure prey and to protect themselves from predators, including humans...period. Apart from this episode of unrealistic melodrama, however, the remainder of the story is intriguing and enjoyable. I heartily recommend this entry in the series and look forward to reading the next in line, Payment in Kind.

Minor in Possession opens with Seattle homicide detective Beaumont drying out in an Arizona rehab clinic. Despite non-stop rainshowers and a rising river, Beau is still a fish out of water, trying to cope with a soon-to-deceased roommate, hostile clinic staff, and visiting family members dredging up his unfortunate past. It'd be enough to drive a person to drink, except of course that's the reason he's in rehab to begin with.

Following his roommate's demise and an attempt on his own life, Beau finds himself on both sides of the investigation and travelling around the state in an ever-increasing number of rental cars. The action is fast, and so are some of the women he meets. The ending is a bit overly sentimental, but getting there is certainly fun.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. My only caveat is don't let this be the first J.P. Beaumont mystery you read. If you're not familiar with the Seattle detective's history - his lifestyle or marriage to Anne Corley, for instance - read Until Proven Guilty or the more recent Partner in Crime before reading this novel. References to Corley and things like Beau's Porsche are dropped in unaccompanied by much context, which is unusual for Jance. Unless you know what she's talking about, you'll be as much a fish out of water as her detective is at times while tackling this mystery.

In the eight installment in the J.P. Beaumont series, Jance takes us on a wonderful journey through the psyche of this enthralling main character. The liver damage caused by Beau's love for scotch has forced him to end up in a recovery center in Arizona where, of course, trouble follows.

This book includes a death and a whodunit mystery, but that plot line takes a back step to the aspects that have to do with Beau's personal life, his family, and his past. One of the reasons I like series is that it allows me to see how characters develop through time, and to understand them better. In this case, Jance took the time to give as a bonus in this regard.

I am a big proponent of reading series in order, but I know some people do not feel this way. In many cases, the difference in procedure are minor, but for this novel I strongly recommend reading the prior seven installments first. Without having that connection with the main character before jumping into this book you will not get the deserved enjoyment of out it.

Beaumont is an enjoyable character... down to earth and seems very real. The series continues to amuse as Beaumont has more cases and/or situations to unravel. This book takes him to rehab in Arizona and it's anything but simple and sure doesn't go as expected for Beau.

This book offers quite a change of scenery for fans of the J.P. Beaumont series. The Washington born-and-bred policeman ends up in a rehab center which is a real contrast to his usual surroundings in the Pacific Northwest. His discoveries of things such as snakes and flash floods offer comic relief from the investigation into the death of his teen-aged roommate. In this book we also catch glimpses of his ex-wife and children, and he seems a bit more human as he goes through the rehab process. If you like Beaumont, you'll probably like this book.