Detective and computer whiz Ali Reynolds directs her quirkiest “employee,” Frigg, to deep dive into the past of a potential future employee. This is not normal procedure at High Noon, the cyber-security firm owned by Ali and her husband, B. Simpson. In fact, it might border on the unethical, but Mateo Vega is a special case. Frigg is an AI (Artificial Intelligence to the ill-informed) and secret weapon of High Noon, which operates out of a small office in Cottonwood, Arizona. Their specialty is tracking down corporate security leaks and is rapidly expanding internationally in today’s multibillion-dollar cyber-theft world. High Noon employs only highly trained computer specialists whose job it is to monitor and secure  worldwide cyber-theft events.

Mateo Vega has spent the last 16 years of his life behind bars in Washington State Prison, doing time for his girlfriend’s murder. He was enrolled in community college with a major in computer science when the incident occurred, and the evidence was stacked against him. His court-appointed lawyer advised him to plead guilty in order to receive a reduced sentence, so he reluctantly agreed but swore his innocence at each annual parole hearing. In prison, he stayed away from trouble and earned an assignment working in the prison library where he absorbed everything he could get his hands on in the rapidly advancing computer field. Now on parole and convinced that the killer is still out there, he is determined to track him down.

"Jance is a born storyteller, tying family crises and crime into exciting tales of intrigue, danger and adventure."

Mateo currently picks up day jobs at Home Depot and the Salvation Army, living a life barely above vagrancy in Seattle. Before he went to prison, he once worked for Stu Ramey, who is now employed at High Noon. Mateo writes him, hoping for a job reference. Stu remembers him to be a bright, hard worker and knew nothing of his incarceration, so he sets Frigg to probe his past. Frigg has powers established in earlier books beyond the capacity, legal or otherwise, of deep diving into a person’s identity and history.

After studying Mateo’s prison reports, Stu, whose own history is a bit sketchy, decides to send him a High Noon entry exam to test his skills. Mateo passes with flying colors and is stunned to be offered a job in Cottonwood. High Noon, currently looking to expand, assigns their supervisor, Cami Lee, to train him. He’s catching on quickly; in fact, he’ll be working with Cami alone all weekend to learn the ropes, while Ali and B. tend to a family situation with her parents.

Unbeknownst to Cami, she is being stalked by a deranged former resident in the office mall where High Noon is located. The man succeeds in nabbing her after dark at her remote home. She’s so severely injured that he thinks she’s dead, but it’s her Krav Maga martial arts skills that keep her alive. While bound and playing dead, her captor throws her body in the back of his pickup and drives into an unmapped region of the vast Sonoran Desert.

When Mateo reports for work on Saturday morning and can’t reach Cami, he checks her house and finds signs of a struggle. His computer skills are put to the test as they all hunt for Cami, who relies on her survival training during a breathtaking escape. Mateo quickly applies Frigg’s skills not only to find and rescue Cami, but to identify and locate her attacker.

To assist Mateo in clearing his name and record, Ali contacts The Last Chance (TLC), a cold-case non-profit organization in Seattle. The head of TLC is a retired Seattle cop, J.P Beaumont, a name that any J.A. Jance fan will recognize.

Jance’s first venture into the mystery genre began in the mid-1980s with the J.P Beaumont series, which boasted 24 novels and three novellas. I can’t say I’ve read them all. This was the era of Janet Evanovich, Sue Grafton, Patricia Cornwell, Elizabeth George, P.D. James, Laurie R. King, Agatha Christie and Louise Penny --- only a few of my favorite female writers off the top of my head. Jance is a born storyteller, tying family crises and crime into exciting tales of intrigue, danger and adventure. UNFINISHED BUSINESS is no exception, and I hope to catch up with Ali Reynolds in the very near future.