I saw this book for 99cents at barnesandnoble.com for the nook, and I see the name a lot but have never read any of this author's books, so I got it.
I have to say I was mildly impressed by the whodunnit-detective story. The overall plot theme was interesting, especially considering the real-life stories it reminds me of.
It is a short story, too, weighing in at a lightweight 209 pages on the nook, so I finished it rather quickly, even though I read it leisurely.
The main character, Detective J. P. Beaumont, though he hates the initials for personal reasons we find out later in the story, is investigating the death of a six-year-old girl with his new partner, Peters.
The situation is this: the mother took the girl and they left the father in Chicago after having joined what basically amounts to a cult-like church in which the leader is incredibly controlling, psychotic, demented, sadistic loser who validates his existence by controlling idiots who can't control themselves.
Then enter the lady in red.
Yes, there is a lady in red.
So you get to know the characters in incredible detail for such a short tale, and connect with them. In addition to the detectives and the mysterious lady, there is also the jerk of a reporter.
The ending...is a killer. By the time you realize who did it, you've been focusing so much on the commotion on your left side that you don't realize the gun is pointed at you from the right.
It was really a good short. But there were quite a few errors as far as punctuation goes, and I wonder if the author or the publisher thought "oh, well, this is just going to be a nearly free book for nook, the reader can deal." That very minute thing, as small as it may be, irked me to no end, and I doubt I will be reading any other J. A. Jance books.
