2021 SF/mystery; 53rd novel of J. D. Robb's In Death series (SF
police procedurals). A woman is found dumped on a demolition site;
while Eve Dallas is investigating that, another body turns up nearby,
but it's been walled up for forty years.
In previous books we've generally seen Dallas able to drop
everything to concentrate on the murder of the week, so it's pleasing
to have a bit of pressure here: she'd like to work on both cases at
once, but the more recent one is clearly more urgent in terms of
evidence and potential witnesses, and the best approach seems to be to
nail that shut first… while not completely forgetting the other. And
after all, they may be related…
And if both cases seem perhaps a little thin – once one has met some
of the people involved it becomes entirely obvious which of them
have the will to commit major villainy, so the only question is why
they did it – they're both reasonably satisfying, and effectively ride
the dividing line between "murder must be solved and society restored"
and "but the victim is still dead, and missed". Perhaps one particular
witness doesn't connect the dots as quickly as one might expect, but
they're someone who's tried to put some traumatic times behind them
and doesn't realise that this incident actually was an unexplained
disappearance rather than just a loss of contact.
A side note deals with a retired, or at least "retired", Russian
gangster, and I'm afraid this does rather descend into cliché: the
loving grandfather who did Bad Stuff back in the day but is now happy
to tend his garden. Not that the series is free of cliché in other
respects; and there is at least an ongoing recognition that he did
do Bad Stuff, and still has bloody hands, even if he's currently
appearing to be helpful.
Of course a big part of the fun in a long series like this – all
right, this is pretty much only the long series like this that I've
read – is revisiting the recurring characters and seeing how they
develop: an antagonism that always seemed a bit baseless is starting
to dissolve, but mostly people are knocking along, with one or two
small new events rather than great being changes in their lives. It's
comfortable to the returning reader (and why would you start a
series at book 53?), but it's also in service of the immediate plot,
rather than feeling like padding or self-indulgence.
In short, another solid series entry.
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