A LESS THAN PERFECT MURDER

The front-page photo was a gruesome heartstopper–a young woman plunging from a skeletal skyscraper, sheer horror frozen on her beautiful face. An accident? Suicide? Detective J. P. Beaumont didn't think so. Especially when the body count started climbing,eventually leading him to the headquarters of the ironworkers’ local– and a crew of hardhats with nerves of steel and some deadly secrets. Beaumont is to make the union pay its dues . . . but the union has something else in mind.

When he wasn't going to the University of Arizona or teaching school, my first husband was an ironworker. In the eighteen years I was with him, I never met an ironworker with a “good” wife, and I certainly never met one with a “good ex-wife.” This book was written in 1987, seven years after my divorce and five years after my husband's death. I think it's plain to see that I still had issues with ironworkers.

When I first came to Seattle, the phone company was building a downtown high-rise in Seattle which they chronicled, from demolition to topping out, with photos taken every thirty minutes. The result, when viewed in video form, is fascinating. It was seeing that video that gave me the idea for writing this book.

Also, at the time, I took a tour of Lake Union Dry dock at the south end of Seattle's Lake Union. The man who took me around was the owner, Hobie Stebbens. Years later, my second husband and I encountered Hobie again when we purchased his father's (Hobie I’s) house in Bellevue. I'm sitting in the living room of that house as I write this and trying to keep from humming It's a Small World After All.

JAJ