Den of Iniquity: A J.P. Beaumont Novel

Personal and professional mysteries collide in Jance’s gripping 26th outing for J.P. Beaumont (after Nothing to Lose). The private investigator’s life is upended when his grandson, Kyle Cartwright, shows up at his home in Bellingham, Wash., and asks to finish high school there. Kyle’s father, Jeremy—J.P.’s son-in-law—has been having an affair, throwing their family into turmoil. When J.P. runs a background check on Jeremy’s girlfriend, he discovers she’s been living under a false identity. Meanwhile, as a favor to a former colleague on the Seattle PD, J.P. takes on a pro bono cold case: two years earlier, Darius Jackson’s death was ruled an accidental fentanyl overdose, but his grandmother insisted he was drug-free at the time of his death—a claim possibly supported by an inconclusive autopsy. Soon after J.P. unearths evidence that Darius may have been murdered, he links the case with a string of other suspicious, supposedly fentanyl-related deaths, and starts to fear he has a serial killer on his hands. Jance’s balance of pathos and plot, and the effortless way she intertwines the novel’s central story lines, proves she’s as sharp as ever. Newcomers and longtime series fans alike will be thrilled. Agent: Alice Volpe, Northwest Literary. (Sept.)