J. A. Jance

• Born: October 27, 1944
• Place of Birth: Watertown, South Dakota

TYPES OF PLOT: Police procedural; thriller

PRINCIPAL SERIES: J. P. Beaumont, 1985-; Joanna Brady, 1993-

Contribution

Judith Ann Jance published her first book as J. A. Jance because her publisher believed readers would not accept a book featuring a male homicide detective that had been written by a woman. The success of Jance’s J. P. Beaumont novels has proven that a woman can create a believable male character. She has also shown that a female law enforcement officer can be popular with the reading public by her Joanna Brady series. Jance’s characters are true to their gender for the most part, acting in typically male or female ways. J. P. Beaumont, for example, is a typical man who is good at his job, attracts women, gradually accepts technology, and learns to have a life away from his job. Joanna Brady remains feminine despite being in a male-dominated profession. Even though she was a tomboy growing up, she sees no reason why she cannot be feminine and be sheriff. Joanna gets dirty and sweaty while doing her job, but she will not smoke a cigar and drink beer with the guys.

Jance has made her characters believable by not making them perfect, allowing readers to relate to J. P. Beaumont and Joanna Brady. While that is one of the reasons J. A. Jance is so popular, another is that she creates a good story. She starts with a corpse and continues with the investigation into what caused the death and the discovery of the murderer. Starting with a murder rather than building up to one may seem backward, but Jance is a master at this type of organization. She is a New York Times best-selling mystery writer and received The Strand Magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award for her work in poetry in 2018.

Each series Jance wrote was rather extensive. The J. P. Beaumont series began in 1985 with Until Proven Guilty and continued well into the 2020s with Nothing to Lose (2022), Girls' Night Out: A J. P. Beaumont Short Story (2024), and Den of Iniquity (2024), the twenty-sixth novel in the series. The Joanna Brady series began in the 1990s with Desert Heat and continued well into the twenty-first century with Missing And Endangered (2021) and Blessing of the Lost Girls (2023). Jance's first Ali Reynolds novel, Edge of Evil, was published in 2006, followed by several novels and novellas, including Collateral Damage (2023).

Biography

Judith Ann Jance was born in Watertown, South Dakota, on October 27, 1944, the third child of a large family. Because she was four years younger than the second child and four years older than the fourth, she was left alone for much of her childhood, making her an avid reader and a good student. In second grade, she read ’s Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (1908) and knew she wanted to be a writer.

Raised in Bisbee, Arizona, Jance graduated from Bisbee High School in 1962. She attended the University of Arizona on an academic scholarship and became the first member of her family to attend a four-year college. She graduated in 1966 with a degree in English and secondary education, received her master's in education in library science in 1970, taught high school English at Pueblo High School in Tucson for two years, and was a librarian for five years at Indian Oasis School District in Sells, Arizona.

Jance had wanted to be a writer since she was in the second grade but became frustrated when University of Arizona officials told her that she could not enroll in the creative writing program because she was a woman. She married a man who was enrolled in the program, Jerry Jance, in 1967; however, he never published anything. Jance has stated that he imitated and by “drinking too much and writing too little.” When an editor in New York expressed interest in a children’s story that Jance had written, her husband told her he was the only writer in their family, and Jance let the matter drop.

While Jance was married, she secretly wrote poetry about the deterioration of her marriage to an alcoholic and her unintentional denial and codependence. The poems chronicle the defeat of a woman whose love was destroyed but found the strength and will to go on with her life. After the Fire (1984) was republished in 2004 with annotations by Jance about where she was and her feelings at the time she wrote each poem.

After Jance was divorced, she wrote between four and seven in the morning, then got her children up and ready for school and went to work selling insurance. The first fiction she wrote was never published. It was twelve hundred pages long, and although it was mostly nonfictional, editors who reviewed the manuscript found the parts that Jance had based on real events were not believable although the truly fictional parts were. It was then that her agent suggested she try writing pure fiction. Her first published novel, Until Proven Guilty (1985), is the first in the J. P. Beaumont series.

Jance met her second husband, William Schlib, at a retreat for people who had lost a spouse; she was doing a reading from After the Fire and he was an attendee. At the beginning of their marriage, Schlib supported her and their five children, but as Jance’s writing took off, she provided the support, and her husband retired at the age of fifty-four.

Analysis

When J. A. Jance was beginning to write, she was advised to write about what she knew. Although she did not know a lot about police procedures, she was very familiar with alcoholism because of her first husband. She used this knowledge to shape the character of J. P. Beaumont, who is told he will die if he does not stop drinking in Dismissed with Prejudice (1989) and enters an alcohol rehabilitation ranch in Arizona in Minor in Possession (1990). The remaining novels have him attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and continually struggling to remain sober.

Jance’s experiences as a single parent are reflected in the character Joanna Brady. Although Joanna loses her husband, Andy, when he is murdered in Desert Heat (1993) and Jance divorced her husband who then died of chronic alcoholism, both women become single mothers. Each has to learn to go on with her life, which includes combining home and work. Joanna is the office manager in an insurance agency, and Jance sold insurance. Jance remarries, as does Joanna in Devil’s Claw (2000). Jance and her character obviously do not share every trait, but Joanna does reflect a lot of Jance’s experiences.

Jance sets her works in Arizona and Washington, the two states in which she has lived most of her life. Places, highways, and geographical elements from both places appear in her stories. In addition, she adds Native American tales from the Tohono Oʼodham to her writing. This creates realism in Jance’s stories by allowing people who live in or have visited these locations to picture her settings in their minds. For people who have not been to these locations, Jance paints a picture with her words.

The strongest quality in Jance’s writing is her characterization. Her characters are first and foremost people and then law enforcement officers. The physical and emotional hurt they receive in one book carries over into the next book or books. Just as real people do not get over being hurt in a short period of time, neither do Jance’s characters.

A tool that Jance uses successfully is dialogue. She feels that if a character talks too long, it is not realistic. People do not talk for long periods of time unless they are giving speeches; therefore, her characters do not. Also, people do not always talk in complete sentences, so her characters do not. Jance’s characters are ordinary people, and her ability to have them speak naturally makes them more realistic.

Jance does research when writing her novels. She talks with professionals in specialty fields (law enforcement and medical); she learns about places in her novels (a specific era of Seattle); and when she hears of a good program (the Teddy Bear Patrol in which members of the police force, emergency medical technicians, and firefighters keep teddy bears with them to give to traumatized children), she includes it in her novels. Jance uses her popularity to benefit charity. Jance’s son-in-law was treated for malignant melanoma, and in 2001, her daughter started Cancer Fighting Flamingoes to raise money for Relay for Life. Jance joined in with an entire tour dedicated to the Flamingo funding. This kind of effort is seen in the character J. P. Beaumont when he helps Ron Peters get his daughters from his former wife who is living in a cult, and in the character Joanna Brady when she adopts a dog from the animal shelter.

Until Proven Guilty

Until Proven Guilty is Jance’s first novel and the first to feature Homicide Detective J. P. Beaumont. Beau is investigating the murder of a little girl who was a member of the Faith Tabernacle. Children in this church are punished and beaten for not following instructions or the rules of the church, and when Beau meets the reverend, Beau thinks he has his murderer. At the girl’s funeral, Beau meets Anne Corley, a beautiful woman dressed in red who places a rose on the little girl’s coffin. After a short courtship, Beau and Anne marry; however, he soon realizes she hides a dark side. On the day of their wedding, Anne maneuvers Beau into a position in which he has to kill her in self-defense. As the Beaumont series continues, the reader finds this is one of those hurts that Jance carries on into the later novels of the series.

Until Proven Guilty provides the foundation for the character of J. P. Beaumont and other characters who continue throughout the series, such as Ron Peters and Ralph Ames. It also gives a reason why Beau does not have lasting relationships with women, even though he becomes involved with them.

Desert Heat

Joanna Brady makes her debut in Desert Heat. Joanna is waiting for her husband, Andy (a deputy sheriff who is running for sheriff), to come home so they can go out for their tenth wedding anniversary. Joanna’s mother, Eleanor, has come to stay the night and babysit her granddaughter, Jenny. As it gets later and later and Andy still has not come home, Joanna goes looking for him. She has not gone far when she sees his vehicle in a ditch and Andy lying on the ground, bleeding to death. He has been shot and left to die. After Joanna solves Andy’s death and finds corruption in the sheriff’s office, people ask her to run for sheriff, and she does.

As with the Beaumont series, some characters in the first Brady novel appear in subsequent novels. Among these characters are Eleanor Lathrop, Jenny Brady, Angie Kellogg, Dick Voland, Marianne Maculyea, Jeff Daniels, and Milo Davis. For better or worse, these people are part of Joanna’s life.

When Joanna wins the election and becomes sheriff of Cochise County in the next novel, Tombstone Courage (1994), she becomes a woman in a predominantly male occupation. She has to show everyone in her office and in other law enforcement agencies that she can do the job. Handling a new job and the people who go along with it, adjusting to life without her husband, and trying to form a new normal life with her daughter are formidable undertakings for anyone. Jance shows how Joanna succeeds but not without encountering rough spots along the way. Life is not smooth, and Jance does not make it smooth for Joanna.

Principal Series Characters:

• J. P. Beaumont’s full name is Jonas Piedmont Beaumont, but he is called Beau or J. P. for what he considers to be obvious reasons. He is six foot, two inches tall, weighs 185 pounds, and although not handsome, attracts women. He walks whenever possible, wears his hair in a crewcut, and is an alcoholic. He defines himself by his work: a homicide detective for the Seattle Police Department and, later, a special investigator with the Washington Attorney General’s Special Homicide Investigation Team. He is good at his job and has good instincts, but because he puts his job and his drinking ahead of his family, he becomes divorced. He remarries but becomes a widower on his wedding day. After he stops drinking, he pays more attention to his family and friends.
• Joanna Brady is the petite, red-haired sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona. Her deceased father, D. H. Lathrop, was a Cochise County sheriff, and her husband, Andy, is a deputy sheriff and a candidate for sheriff when he is murdered. After solving her husband’s death, Joanna is asked to run for sheriff and wins the election. While attending the Arizona Police Officers Academy in Phoenix, she meets Butch Dixon. Joanna and Butch marry, and he becomes a househusband while writing his novel. Family and friends are important to Joanna; however, sometimes she is torn between them and her obligations as sheriff.

Bibliography

Friesinger, Alison. “R-Rated Thrillers, PG-13 Mysteries.” Publishers Weekly, vol. 251, no. 15, 12 Apr. 2004, p. 35.

Goldberg, Rylla. “Interview with J. A. Jance.” Deadly Women: The Woman Mystery Reader’s Indispensable Companion, edited by Jan Grape, et al., Carroll & Graf, 1998.

Jance, J. A. “Best-Selling Suspense Novelist Keeps Busy Writing, Promoting.” Interview by Jessica Agi. Anchorage Daily News, 4 Sept. 2006, p. D1.

Jance, J. A. "About Me." J. A. Jance Author, www.jajanceauthor.com/about. Accessed 25 Aug. 2024.

Jance, J. A. “PW Talks with J. A. Jance: Strangers on a Train.” Interview by Louise Jones, Publishers Weekly, 20 June 2005, www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/31682-pw-talks-with-j-a-jance.html. Accessed 25 Aug. 2024.

Kinsella, Bridget. “Jance Promotes Book, Cancer Research.” Publishers Weekly, 8 Aug. 2005, www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20050808/39513-jance-promotes-book-cancer-research.html. Accessed 25 Aug. 2024.

Rye, Marilyn. “Changing Gender Conventions and the Detective Formula: J. A. Jance’s Beaumont and Brady Series.” Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 37, no. 1, Aug. 2003, pp. 105-19.