2017 SF/mystery; fifty-sixth (roughly, or 45th novel) of J. D. Robb's
In Death series. Homicide Lieutenant Eve Dallas is out with a
colleague when another patron of the bar is cut and bleeds to death in
front of her. She may not have much time for gossip journalists, but
solving murders is still her job.
This is something of a change of pace for the series; recent
books have tended to feature serial killers, with a new body turning
up every few chapters to emphasise time pressure. Here that doesn't
happen, since it looks as if the killing may have been a one-off; so
to keep the tension going we get rather more of Eve Dallas and her
thoughts about the nature of the job, and how even horrible
blackmailers deserve not to be murdered. (Imprisoned, maybe.)
So basically it's a police procedural, with various bits to remind the
reader that all those long-term characters are still out there. This
time it's Nadine Furst who gets her turn for a reasonably large role.
Even the victim is someone who showed up in a bit-part in an earlier
book.
The relationship between Eve and her richest-man-in-the-world husband
Roarke is solid here – well, it's been dozens of books since they got
married, they're still very much in love, and they continue to get to
know each other better. There's a minor hiccup and they get over it,
the way grown-ups do, rather than turning it into huge drama.
The actual murder plot is pretty straightforward. There's an obvious
suspect, but very little in the way of evidence: the gradual
reconstruction of the victim's background is secondary to the
interviews with her various blackmail victims (with a strong
suggestion that she had a knack for picking people who wouldn't go to
the police – which is a bit of a cheat, but necessary for her career
to have gone on for as long as it has).
It doesn't leap out as something amazing and different, but this is
forty-plus books into the series, and I suspect that most people
who've stuck with it this long don't want amazing and different;
this is more like an episode of a long-running soap opera or drama
show, where some of the pleasure comes from familiar characters doing
familiar things.
Followed by Dark in Death.
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