2015 SF/mystery; fifty-first (roughly) of J. D. Robb's In Death
series. Two serial killers have crossed the USA and landed in New
York; Lieutenant Eve Dallas tracks them down.
Unfortunately there's no mystery for the reader, because an
initial chapter tells us who the killers are and what their motivation
is, and occasional cutaways show us the terror of their victims. It's
something Robb's occasionally done before, and for me it defuses the
sense of exploration and puzzle-solving that's an important part of
the reason why I read mystery stories. Dallas spends most of the story
catching the protagonists' knowledge up to the point where the reader
started, and I think that if the first chapter (as well as the
cutaways) had simply been dropped this might have worked rather
better.
What's worse, this often feels by-the-numbers. Ho hum, Eve doesn't
understand time zones. Tee hee, those people living in the Midwest
sure aren't like normal New York City types. Hey ho, the characters
are wheeled out to do the standard things they do. Editing is lacking
too; a recording medium used multiple times is "overridden" rather
than "overwritten". A ploy used by Ted Bundy is attributed to Jeffrey
Dahmer.
The actual investigation isn't too bad, but at this point in the
series I'm reading for the people rather than for the police work, and
they're faded copies. The dialogue feels recycled. The brief scenes of
the victims come over as torture porn.
This is, frankly, what I'd expect book number 51 in a series to look
like, but usually Robb does much better.
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