RogerBW's Blog

2016 SF/mystery; fifty-fourth (roughly) of J. D. Robb's In Death series. A sniper is shooting people in New York – at random, or with specific targets in mind? Lieutenant Eve Dallas investigates.

Let's get the major problem out of the way first: Robb has clearly never felt comfortable with the science-fiction content of these books (though when it's a major plot element it's sometimes handled very well), and here the murder weapon is a "laser rifle" which:

Strike from one of these from a distance of—say a mile? It takes two and a half seconds to go from weapon to target.

Photons go at less than Mach 2. Who knew?

But really that's not important to the plot, and some basic editing could have fixed it. This is a story about a really expert sniper who's turned serial killer, and how they got to where they are; the SF components are incidental.

It's more police-procedural action than mystery; there's some detective work at first, but the prime suspects are quickly identified (it's not as though there are many expert snipers about) and then it's a matter of tracking them down and catching them before more people get shot.

Although Dallas would probably hate to think it, one of the impressions that comes over most strongly is that she's a good coordinator: she allocates her own detectives, other police resources, and her powerful friends who want to help, so that they do the things they're most useful at and get the case cracked quickly.

There are some scenes from the killer's perspective, but not many, and they don't give away major plot points. Many of the series regular characters show up, but apart from Eve's husband Roarke they have relatively small parts; this is a story that stays focussed on the protagonist.

There's nothing particularly surprising here. The recurring characters stay in character. The criminal is caught. Eve is always right (at least about police work). I don't find these books formulaic, though; there is a strong element of predictability in them, but this far into a series that's hard to avoid.

I'm still enjoying these books, even if I tend to forget about them for a year and then discover two more have come out. Whoops, three. Followed by Echoes in Death.