Fire and Ice

A Beaumont and Brady Novel

By: J. A. Jance

Narrated by: Hillary Huber, Erik Davies

Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

Not since Partner in Crime have New York Times bestselling author J. A. Jance's beloved series characters shared a stage. But now, in a pair of cases that cross state lines, Beaumont and Brady are back! Seattle investigator J. P. Beaumont is working a series of murders in which six young women have been wrapped in tarps, doused with gasoline, and set on fire. Their charred remains have been creating a grisly pattern of death across western Washington. At the same time, in the Arizona desert, Cochise County sheriff Joanna Brady is looking into a homicide in which the elderly caretaker of an ATV park was run over and left to die. Was he a victim of some kind of turf warfare - or possibly something more sinister? Then a breakthrough in Beaumont's case leads him into Brady's jurisdiction. When the two met on a joint investigation years earlier, sparks flew. But here, as the threads of their cases wind together, Beaumont and Brady must put aside echoes of their shared past as they are once again drawn into an orbit of deception. Except this time it's not just their own lives that are in danger but those of the people closest to them as well.

©2009 J.A. Jance (P)2009 HarperCollins Publishers

Not Great But Okay

Kind of disjointed, predictable, and lazy writing. It will fill up some time and that is about it.

Just read the book.

The reader’s are incredibly disappointing. They sound like male/female Siri.
Was a struggle to finish the book.

Where is the rest of the book?

I've enjoyed Jance's stories for many years, but this one left me wondering what happened to the rest of the book. When I got to the end, I had to go back and listen to the final few chapters again to see if I had missed something.
It seemed like she probably wrote a longer, more complete version and then the publisher said it had to be pared down to the current length, both in pages and the number of CDs the audio version would fit on.

abrupt ending

it's like, oh I have one page of paper left, gotta end the book, when in reality another five chapters were in order. next time, buy more paper and finish the book properly, very disappointed

Narration problematic

Gene Engene is always going to be the voice of J. P. Beaumont to me. He was spot on with the personality and regional pronunciations. The narrator on the book before this drove me crazy by making Ralph sound like Scotty on Star Trek. The cadence and inflection of this narration made me suspect it was computer generated in many places. It was often difficult to tell which character was speaking because they all sounded the same.
The action kept jumping back and forth from Washington to Arizona so solid identifiable characters were a necessity. This version just wasn't worth the time.

Stilted Narration

Started listening. Stilted and boring narration. Couldn't continue.

The Worst Performance I have heard in an Audio Book!

I am a huge fan of J.P. Beaumont.....But this....It was hard to get through large parts.

The Erik Davies performance was AWFUL. The voices were unbearable and sometimes even sounded like the old dead robotic tones of an automated voice speaking one word at a time. Other times like a monologue. At No Time Was He Good. His male characters sounded like women sometimes. Just Boring.
Just Plain Terrible! I feel like I should be paid for my time spent listening to this.
Hillary Huber is lifeless.

Terrible readers

Ive listened to the first 15 Beaumont series but won’t listen to any more since readers changed. It is B painful to hear these wimpy voices . Trying to be JP Beaumont. You just lost me! And I wish you could refund my credits. I will certainly listen to a sample before I buy anything’

Just Plain Awful

I am a HUGE fan of J.P. Beaumont. But this book should be excluded from the series.

1. The narrators in this book were the worst I have ever heard. Hilary Huber sounds just like Siri, the voice in your cell phone. Almost no inflection, feeling or variance in tone or mood or volume. Erik Davies is better but not by much.

2. J.P. Beaumont is a great character; he has flaws but also humor and inner strength. He tells it like it is. Joanna Brady is TOO good, boring, and completing lacking in appeal. Whenever Ms. Jance pairs the two in a book (this is the second, I believe), the story suffers.

3. This story was dull. Period. I only finished the book because I like to be able to say I read the whole series.

Ms. Jance, drop Joanna Brady, get a better narrator and write a good story. You have done this many times before; I am counting on you to do it again.