Discovering a dismembered body among the charred remains of a Seattle fishing boat, J. P. Beaumont takes a trip down memory lane with an old chum and uncovers the determined plot of a killer. 75,000 first printing. $55,000 ad/promo. Tour. Seattle's most famous homicide cop has a go at another murder case in Jance's new addition to her acclaimed series. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. Cop J. P. Beaumont is extremely good at what he does--homicide investigations. And in his latest case, he's better than ever. All those fans who've been eagerly awaiting this one won't be disappointed--it's as intriguing, riveting, and action packed as they've come to expect. This time, Beau tackles a case with its origins in the Nazi death camps of World War II. When not one but two grisly torture-murder victims are discovered in the Seattle area, Beau and his new partner, Sue Danielson, are called in to investigate. Much to Beau's surprise, he finds that one of the victims was married to a former high school classmate, Else Didricksen. What Beau doesn't know is that Else has for years been as much an unwitting victim of the past as her now-dead husband. What's more, the murderer is determined to silence everyone connected to that horrible past--at any cost. Jance has created a suspenseful story that's sure to keep readers involved, and J. P. Beaumont is as attractive, appealing, and endearing as ever. Emily Melton A particularly gruesome homicide--a fishing-boat captain killed and set afire aboard his boat after each of his fingers and toes has been removed--is only the beginning of the nasty developments in this latest outing for J.P. Beaumont of Seattle Homicide (Failure to Appear, 1993, etc.). There's the witness who nearly ran down a suspicious character fleeing from the scene of the blaze (a hit-and-he-ran); there's a second, land-bound, victim, identified (barely) as Gunter Gebhardt's paramour, Denise Whitney, whose existence would be quite a surprise to his wife even if she hadn't been executed in the same distinctive way; and there's the revelation that Gebhardt's father was an SS guard at the Sobibor extermination camp--a man who may have stolen a fortune in death- camp gold and taken a powder one step ahead of Simon Wiesenthal's people, who tell a tale of a third de-digitized corpse. You might think that Beau, who began the case as the old acquaintance of Gunter's widow and her boating neighbor Alan Torvoldsen and kept tripping over his society connections in the innocent early phases of the investigation, had supped his fill of horrors with the news of Nazi-hunting, but the guilty secrets his cast is hiding turn out to be guiltier still. Jance doesn't write trenchantly enough or plot tightly enough to justify dragging in the Holocaust back-story, but there's no denying the poisonous effects she gets out of it. Brrr. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Used Book in Good Condition