Moving Target by J. A. Jance, a Mysterious Review.

Review: Ex-reporter Ali Reynolds and her fiancé B. Simpson, head of a computer security company, become entangled in more than one mystery in J. A. Jance's aptly titled Moving Target, the ninth mystery in this series.

The first mystery involves teenaged computer geek Lance Tucker, who is in a juvenile correction facility as a result of B.'s expert testimony against him when he was accused of hacking into his school's computer system. Now Lance is in intensive care, the result off a ladder breaking his legs and a subsequent fire that burned 30% of his body. He had been hanging lights on a Christmas tree at the facility when the accident occurred. But B. isn't so sure it was an accident. Lance had used a not-quite-completed computer application he developed that supposedly would allow anyone to surf the web completely anonymously, a tool that would, once obtained from the youth and refined, be valuable to a certain segment of the Internet population. He enlists the aid of Sister Anselm to protect Lance during his recovery while he investigates who might have wanted to hurt him.

At the same time a second mystery is unfolding in England, where Ali has accompanied B.'s aid-de-camp Leland Brooks in an attempt to reconcile with his family. Leland had left England almost 60 years ago after his father had disowned him, and now all these years later Leland learns his father had been murdered soon after he left and the case remains unsolved.

Moving Target is a fast-paced thrilling mystery with well-developed storylines. The characters are appealing, especially the secondary cast, whose backstories are filled in to a greater degree. And while the principal characters are on separate continents, they stay in touch and keep each other apprised of what's going on. The mystery in England is somewhat more interesting than that in the US, maybe because it is more "traditional" in both style and substance, but the two do complement each other nicely.

Special thanks to guest reviewer Betty of The Betz Review for contributing her review of Moving Target.

Acknowledgment: Simon & Schuster provided a copy of Moving Target for this review.

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Touchstone (Hardcover), February 2013
ISBN-13: 9781451628685; ISBN-10: 1451628684

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William Morrow (Hardcover), July 2014
ISBN-13: 9780062134707; ISBN-10: 0062134701

Moving Target

An Ali Reynolds Mystery by J. A. Jance