Partner in Crime, by J. A. Jance

Ms. Jance has been taking turns writing two mystery series featuring Sheriff Joanna Brady in Arizona and former homicide detective J. P. Beaumont in Washington state. Her latest novel brings the two characters together for the first time.  Rochelle Baxter, a talented artist, has recently moved to Cochise County, Arizona.  On the eve of the opening of her one woman show at a local gallery, Rochelle is found dead in her home.  Sheriff Brady is called in and Rochelle’s death is determined to be murder by poison—and a particularly deadly, scary poison, at that.  Further investigation reveals that Rochelle had been placed in the witness protection program by the Washington state attorney general.  When Brady notifies the attorney general of Rochelle’s death, he sends J. P. Beaumont to Arizona to assist in the investigation—which does not sit well with Brady.  She resents what she sees as interference in her investigation—until a second murder occurs and she decides she could use Beaumont’s expertise.  Brady and Beaumont are both winning characters and I enjoyed the alternating chapters that changed to third person with Brady and first person with Beaumont, in keeping with the styles of the individual series.  Nicely done.
 

No Way to Treat a First Lady, by Christopher Buckley

It’s been too long a wait since the last Buckley book and his kind of political humor has been missed.  First Lady Elizabeth Tyler MacMann has been charged with murdering her husband, President Ken MacMann, a philandering husband in the Bill Clinton mold.  Seems Ken dallied once too often and Beth bopped him with a Paul Revere spittoon.  At least that’s the government’s case.  Beth claims she’s innocent and she hires the number one attorney in the land, Boyce “Shameless” Baylor.  He’s earned his nickname the old-fashioned way, by being absolutely shameless in doing anything and everything conceivable to get his clients off.   The question is, will he get Beth off?  Or even want to?  When they were both in college together they were engaged to be married and Beth broke up with him to marry Ken.  Shameless has never forgiven her and wouldn’t this be a good time for sweet revenge after all those years and his four miserable marriages trying to forget her.  You’ll have great fun finding out what happens as you follow the very humorous Trial of the Millennium.
 

Nights in Rodanthe, by Nicholas Sparks

Sixtysomething Adrienne Willis is divorced and has three children, two boys and a girl, Amanda.  They all live in or near Rocky Mount, North Carolina.  Adrienne’s divorce occurred when the children were in their early teens and she raised them pretty much on her own.  Now, they are grown and married.  Amanda, however, has lost her husband to cancer.  Although it has been eight months since his death, Amanda is still not able to function and her children are beginning to suffer from her neglect.  Adrienne decides that it is time to sit down with her daughter and tell her what happened to her when she was forty-five and just newly divorced.  At that time, she left her kids with her ex-husband and she went by herself to the beach town of Rodanthe to house-sit the bed and breakfast inn of a friend.  There, she met someone who would change the path of the rest of her life.  Her time in Rodanthe is something she has never told any of her children.  But, in relating what happened to her in Rodanthe, she hopes her experience will pull her daughter out of her depression.  Sparks is known for his romantic novels and this is another warm book with interesting characters and a nice story.
 

The Murder Book, by Jonathan Kellerman

When cops investigate a murder, they put all the paperwork in a file and it’s called the murder book.  Alex Kellerman, the L.A. psychologist with the penchant for getting involved in police cases, is anonymously sent a scrapbook filled with old crime scene murder photos; the cover is titled The Murder Book.  Alex shows the book to his cop friend, Milo Sturgis, and Milo recognizes one of the photos from a long ago case he briefly worked on as a rookie.  A young, teenage girl was stabbed to death and her body dumped near a freeway.   Before he and his partner got very far along in the investigation, his partner was forced to retire for wrongdoing and Milo was reassigned to a different precinct.  Milo never knew what happened to the case but now, twenty years later, he discovers that the case was never solved and the paperwork is all missing.  He and Alex decide the scrapbook is an invitation for them to look into the case and find out what happened twenty years ago.  On the homefront, Alex’s longtime girlfriend, Robin, has hit the road—possibly not to return.  I found the murder mystery for this latest Kellerman a little dubious but I thought it was interesting that a good chunk of the book went back in time to Milo’s rookie period—when he was trying to cope with being a new, gay cop on the L.A. police force.  This, and the subplot with Robin’s departure, kept the book going for me.
 

Q is for Quarry, by Sue Grafton

 Several mysteries I have read recently have revolved around cases from long ago—note the Kellerman review above.  Grafton’s latest Kinsey Millhone mystery also goes back in time to a case from 1969.  In Q is for Quarry, it is the spring of 1987 and Kinsey is about to turn 37.  She has just moved into a new office and would welcome a distraction from unpacking boxes.  The distraction comes in the form of two older Santa Teresa County Sheriff detectives, Stacey Oliphant and Con Dolan.  Both detectives have health problems and are about to retire but they’d like to close a case that has bothered them for eighteen years.  Back in 1969, a teenage girl’s murdered body was dumped at a quarry outside of town.  The detectives were unable to even identity the girl and her murderer was never found.  Kinsey agrees to help with the legwork and assist with a fresh look at the case.  Her estranged grandmother owns the quarry and during the course of the investigation Kinsey will learn more about the relatives she never knew growing up in her Aunt Gin’s care.   This was another enjoyable edition to the Grafton series—made even more interesting due to the fact that the case is based on a real-life unsolved mystery.
 
 

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