Janet Dawson, Author Ballantine Books $20 (336p) ISBN 978-0-449-90765-8
Wife abuse and the psychology of victims are themes of the third case for Oakland, Calif., female PI Jeri Howard, after Till the Old Men Die. Ruth Raynor, planning to divorce her husband, Navy first-class petty officer Sam Raynor, asks Jeri to look...
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Janet Dawson, Author Ballantine Books $21 (308p) ISBN 978-0-449-90976-8
Compassionate and tenacious, Oakland, Calif., PI Jeri Howard makes her fifth appearance (after Don't Turn Your Back on the Ocean) in this finely crafted, absorbing adventure. Howard is hired by an alcoholic woman to find out if the body of a young...
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Janet Dawson, Author Ballantine Books $21.95 (298p) ISBN 978-0-449-00042-7
In the seventh Jeri Howard mystery (after A Credible Threat), Dawson doesn't quite carry off her attempt to link a moving story of Jewish children hidden from the Nazis in WWII Paris with a present-day mystery involving skinheads in California. In...
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Janet Dawson, Author Ballantine Books $23.5 (288p) ISBN 978-0-449-00198-1
Last time out (Witness to Evil, 1977), Oakland, Calif., PI Jeri Howard dealt with Nazis old and neo. This time, the villains are corporate fat cats. Paralegal Rob Lawter has paid Jeri a retainer for unspecified services, then has died from a fall...
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Janet Dawson, Author St. Martin's Press $17.95 (260p) ISBN 978-0-312-04464-0
California PI Jeri Howard's new case seems straightforward: find Renee Mills Foster, nee Elizabeth Renee Willis, a wife who packed her bags, left her young son with her mother-in-law, emptied the joint bank account and took off. But the plucky and...
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Janet Dawson, Author Ballantine Books $20 (326p) ISBN 978-0-449-90766-5
A week's vacation with her family in Monterey becomes a busman's holiday for Oakland PI Jeri Howard, last seen in Take a Number, in her taut, absorbing fourth adventure. First, she agrees to help a biologist cousin find out who is mutilating...
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Janet Dawson, Author Ballantine Books $21 (261p) ISBN 978-0-449-90977-5
California PI Jeri Howard, seen last in Nobody's Child, takes a deliciously suspicion-saturated interest in everyone around in her latest adventure. That doubting stance makes the best part of this tale, which begins with harassing phone calls and...
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Janet Dawson, Perseverance (SCB, dist.), $14.95 trade paper (282p) ISBN 978-1-56474-494-4
In Dawson's delightful 10th Jeri Howard mystery (after 2000's A Killing at the Track), the elderly proprietor of a movie memorabilia shop in Alameda, Calif., overhears PI Jeri mention her actress grandmother, Jerusha Layne, who went to Hollywood in...
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Janet Dawson. Perseverance (SCB, dist.), $15.95 trade paper (288p) ISBN 978-1-56474-518-7
This thoughtful suspense novel from Dawson (Bit Player and nine other titles in her Jeri Howard PI series) concerns families, secrets, and the human cost of coffee from El Salvador. San Francisco academic, single mother, and author Lindsey Page...
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Janet Dawson. Perseverance (SCB, dist.), $15.95 trade paper (216p) ISBN 978-1-56474-555-2
In Dawson’s exciting 11th Jeri Howard mystery (after 2011’s Bit Player), the California PI is relieved to discover that a burned body—shot through the chest—
is not that of her school teacher brother, Brian, who’s gone missing. Since Brian’s...
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Janet Dawson. Perseverance (SCB, dist.), $15.95 trade paper (232p) ISBN 978-1-56474-569-9
Set in 1953, Dawson’s slow-moving follow-up to 2013’s Death Rides the Zephyr finds Jill McLeod, who works as the classic train’s Zephyrette, traveling west from Chicago through the Rockies toward the San Francisco Bay Area. As the only female crew...
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Janet Dawson. Perseverance (SCB, dist.), $15.95 trade paper (232p) ISBN 978-1-56474-586-6
The gentrification of Oakland, Calif., forms the backdrop of Dawson’s solid 12th Jeri Howard mystery (after 2015’s Cold Trail), in which the PI faces off against real estate developers while looking into the death of security guard Cal Brady, a...
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Janet Dawson. Perseverance, $15.95 trade paper (232p) ISBN 978-1-56474-598-9
A ghost helps solve his own murder in Dawson’s uneven third California Zephyr mystery (after 2016’s Death Deals a Hand). In May 1953, Jill McLeod, a customer service employee known as a Zephyrette, finds a passenger, Mr. Randall, dead in his...
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Janet Dawson. Perseverance, $15.95 trade paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-56474-606-1
Howard’s workmanlike 13th mystery featuring PI Jeri Howard (2018’s Water Signs) takes Jeri to New Orleans, where she gets a call from Davina Roka, a friend back in her hometown of Oakland, Calif. Davina, a New Orleans native, asks Jeri to look for...
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Janet Dawson. Perseverance, $15.95 trade paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-56474-618-4
Set in 1953, Dawson’s agreeable if lightweight fourth California Zephyr mystery (after 2018’s The Ghost in Roomette Four) finds Jill McLeod—who usually works as a customer service employee called a Zephyrette on the California Zephyr, a train that...
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