[.ca] Payment in Kind (ISBN 0380758369)

Solid entertainment:
First I must say in response to an earlier review, no the villian is not revealed early on! I don't know how she knew, but I didn't know until the very end! This was a good book and a fast pace read. I'm not usually a big mystery reader, but I really like Jance's style and most of all I like J.P. Beaumont. He is a great main character.

Jance Does It Again!:
J.A. Jance's "Payment in Kind" is a great story. Again featuring one of the author's main protagonists, J.P. Beaumont, Jance weaves a spellbinding trail that keeps the reader on edge and suspecting almost all of the characters in the story at one point or another; just as you are absolutely sure you know who did it -- you discover it wasn't them! Keeps you moving to the very last chapter. One of the finest mystery writers today; a wonderful charcter (literally and figuratively) in Beaumont!

Entertaining reading:
In this addition to this series, J.P. has returned from a rehab center in the Arizona desert to resume crime-fighting in Seattle. During a very unusual blizzard, a double homocide occurs at the Seattle School District's administrative offices. The head of Labor Relations and a security guard are found murdered in a closet. More than the murder victims come out of the closet as J.P. discovers some family secrets of the deceased. The reader is led through twists and turns in the plot until the true identity of the killer is uncovered. This is vintage Jance!

Any JP book is a good ...........:
Any JP book is a good ...book. Are you kidding get this and all the others, I love JP Beaumount!

A solid read, familiar territory:
This novel was an airplane read for me--a solid three hour flight plus a few moments at the hotel the next morning to finish it up. The plotting and characterization were solid, but not particularly novel. The "extras" added to the plot are in the main eccentric and interesting, as good mystery cameo players should be. Ms. Jance's protagonist was somewhat disappointing--a suitable sleuth, but some of the backstory just didn't work for me in this one. I'd pick up another Jance if I were in the airport and needed a good read, but I wouldn't go out of my way to locate the rest of this series. What do you get when you cross a dash of Christie, a dash of Hammett, a trace of Paretsky, and a lot of those modern "suburbanesque" detectives....something readable, certainly, but not quite a top flight mystery. If you need a good read, it's here, but it's a flawed work, and the villain is obvious from way too early in.