Listening to Failure to Appear by J. A. Jance

J(udith) A. Jance. Failure to Appear. A Dramatic Reading by Gene Engene. Spokane, WA: Books in Motion, 1994. 8 Audiocassettes. Approximately 10.2 hours.

J. P. Beaumont, whom we left happily sipping McNaughton's in Seattle, turns up in Ashland, Oregon, looking for his runaway daughter, and stumbles into the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, an AA meeting, and a murder. He does find his daughter, but her appearance in the novel is only intermittent.

The first murder victim appears to have been run over by car, until Beaumont cuts himself on the knife protruding from the corpse's chest. The murder weapon turns out to have been stolen from the production of Romeo and Juliet being staged at the festival, and all eyes quickly turn to Juliet. This Juliet may have killed more than the envious moon, and she certainly isn't what it says in the playbill.

Beaumont sets off on a series of wild-goose chases and red-herring pursuits that take him to such garden spots as Walla Walla, Washington, and Medford, Oregon. He manages to stand up his new girlfriend at least once too often. And his guards red Porsche is destroyed when a gas explosion destroys an old farmhouse when Juliet and other actors hang out.

In the end, we solve a lot of mysteries, we get Beaumont's daughter married off, we see a murderess off the stage - permanently. But we don't get to see Beaumont take a drink. Through all the stress and strain, the Serenity Prayer, or something, keeps him high and dry.

Entertaining.