I just finished the J.A. Jance trilogy about a Los Angeles TV reporter who upon turning 40 was fired from her job because of her age.
Ali Reynolds, at the same time, finds out that her husband of seven years also has been looking in younger pastures. Ali’s son by her deceased husband is finishing college at UCLA and so she heads for her home town of Sedona, Arizona.
To find her voice amid all of the changes in her life she begins a blog called
www.cutlooseblog.com. (I just googled the site and it routes the seeker to J.A. Jance’s personal web site.
The three books thus far in this series are 1) Edge of Evil 2) Web of Evil and 3) Hand of Evil.
Hurrah for Jance moving the mystery genre into the world of instant gratification and instant feedback, the internet.
Of course as in any good mystery book/series, the vehicle, cutlooseblog, gets Ali in a whole lot of trouble which she manages to work through --from the death of her childhood friend, to the death of her estranged husband, to finally the death of the friend of the family, revealing the world of battered wives betrayal and pedophiles -- while fighting for “justice and the American way.”
Judy Jance has a few pages at the end of the book “Edge of Evil” in which she introduces herself. She writes that she always wanted to be a writer but was “edged” away from creative writing courses into early education and library science degrees (sound a lot like my bio. We both even graduated college in 1966.) I very much enjoyed getting to know Ms. Jance. In understanding the low points of her life, I can very much see why another of her series, the J. P. Beaumont character, to me, rings with such authenticity.
Our friend Martha has me dog-earing pages, something I never did before:
Page 147: “Of course you did,……And why not? You’re not the first other who spent years making the best of a bad bargain in hopes of maintaining some kind of financial security for her kids.”
Page 178: “Working in the Sugarloaf (café) today ahs also made me value anew the work done by countless people in the food service industry all over this country. They’re the men and women who every day, morning and evening, greet their customers cheerfully and courteously. In the….they also serve up something else. Along with bacon and eggs and has browns, they dish up human connections and spiritual sustenance.”
Page 181: Once you’re unfortunate enough to step into the world of ALS you’ll find it’s a very small one. It’s like you get on a road that only runs in one direction. When you start out, you meet others who are following the same path. You ask them for directions and suggestions, so you’ll know what to expect along the way. Some people travel the road faster than others, so someone who started out late may leapfrog ahead of someone who was diagnosed earlier.
(The above paragraph rings true for all, including me, who have faced serious illness.)
Page 239 one women who must go into hiding because of spousal abuse a cutlooseblog talks about a wife going into hiding. “Unfortunately, due to liability issues, the organization that helped me is reluctant to be involved in situations that involve minor children.”
(One can learn a lot from well researched even light mystery fiction.)
I enjoyed my hours spent with Ali Reynolds. Compared to “A Thousand Splendid Suns, it probably wouldn't receive a rating; but in the world of mystery writing, these books are a solid “A+”.
Regards,
Kathy Albers
