2025 romance/SF/mystery; 61st novel of Robb's In Death series (SF
police procedurals). A failed artist has worked out how to make the
art world truly appreciate his paintings: the deaths of the models.
The detective work is excellent; the villain is something of a
disappointment. There's little surprise about him, and he's less of an
interestingly twisted mind than someone who just thinks his wishes
supersede everyone else's.
Some of this is probably because we get multiple views through the
killer's eyes. I've said before that I don't love the technique; when
we find out what happened, I'd rather it be over the shoulders of the
investigators, and Robb has certainly done that effectively before.
All right, she's a good enough writer not to leer over the kills, but
this murderer, while certainly plausible, just isn't all that
interesting to watch.
On the other hand, I enjoyed as always the process of building up
information from small clues. In this case there are several strands
leading to large sets of potential suspects, and a break in one lets
the others collapse to pinpoint the most plausible candidate.
We spend some time in the world of the "street LCs", the lowest grade
of the Licenced Companions who've replaced prostitutes in this
setting—and while nothing's stated explicitly, it seems that they
really are the lowest grade, with everyone starting at this level
and needing some sort of further qualification if they want to call on
customers… which would seem to undermine much of the safety aspect of
making prostitution legal in the first place. I suspect, though, that
this is merely Robb not really being a science fiction author, and not
having thought through the worldbuilding in enough detail. (After all,
her art galleries here are recognisably unaltered from the present
day…)
And there's a reference to "undo punishment" which does not belong in
any book that's had an editor, nor in one by as experienced a writer
as this. Did you never pause to wonder what that phrase meant, J D? I
realise you produce many books a year; so does Glynn Stewart. Quality
should not be suffering this much.
The book does feel flabby at times. Not only do we get the repetitive
killer's viewpoint scenes, we have multiple interviews with the
families, an extended tour of the new house that's been an ongoing
background project for the last few books, and in general quite a few
similar procedural scenes that don't seem to add to the story after
the first time each thing is shown. Yes, all right, at this point in
the series I'm reading for the series, for the progress of the
ongoing characters, more than for the individual plot, but this felt
at times as though the plot were too thin and had needed some
padding.
We've seen most of this before, indeed many of the individual scenes
are familiar. Yes, at book 61 that's not surprising. But book 60
managed to keep things fresh, and this was more of a disappointment.