Thankless in Death is the forty-sixth of J. D. Robb's In Death
series. It's also, for me, the first disappointment.
There isn't a great deal of series-level development here. Many
of the extended cast come back and do their thing, but we don't meet
anyone new who seems likely to return, and nor do any relationships
seem to go through major changes. Fair enough, that can't happen every
time. Sometimes you just concentrate on the main story.
The main story's decent enough: unfortunately it's not a mystery, as
we get a frequent villain's-eye perspective and know exactly
whodunnit. That's not a complete show-stopper for me, particularly as
the police generally aren't far behind, but I do regard it as an
error, since it removes the detection element from the plot; there's
also a risk of coming over as wallowing in the villain's gruesomeness.
Our protagonists, Police Lieutenant Eve Dallas and her
richest-man-in-the-world husband Roarke, don't seem to have much spark
to them here. Even the obligatory sex scenes seem, well, obligatory.
There's a bit of promise as Dallas is offered a captaincy (not
surprising, given her record) and turns it down to stay in the field,
but that's really the only solid element here. The rest, I'm afraid,
is strictly for series fans. As with Notorious Nineteen, the ongoing
character bits feel as though they could have been composed with a
macro: Dallas doesn't want to hear about her underling's love life,
the coroner's playing suitable music when doing an autopsy, Dallas is
hiding food from the office food thief.
If as I had you've read the first forty-five, you can get through this
one on inertia, but I can't see it hooking in very many new readers. I
really hope the next one is better; I think Robb has more to say about
these characters, but here she's just marking time.
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