Book Talk: J.A. Jance, ‘Long Time Gone’

Judith Ann Jance uses her initials for her pseudonym because a publisher told her that readers might not accept a female author, writing about a male detective. That was about 50 years ago. Since then, she has published 29 best sellers about male cop, J.P. Beaumont, 20 about Ali Reynolds, 22 about Joanna Brady, and 5 in her Walker Family Mysteries series. That’s one heck of a record for an author of any gender, and I’m surprised that I hadn’t discovered her work earlier.

I recently read her “Long Time Gone,” a cop mystery that’s partially a police procedural, borrowed from my friend Rochelle Noblett. Honestly, I had no idea that the novel had been written by a woman until I finished it and saw here photograph on the inside of the back cover. She’s that good.

“Long Time Gone” (2005, 352 pages in hardback) opens with Sister Mary Katherine, Mother Superior at St. Benedict convent, who has been terrorized by unexplainable and unmemorable nightmares. Founder of the convent, she gets advice from a younger nun, a psych major when she was in college. Following the younger woman’s counsel, Sister Mary Katherine arranges a series of appointments with a former classmate who is now a hypnotherapist. He records their sessions, and Sister Mary Katherine learns about her experience as a young child, an experience that must be reported to the police.