After the last few books I was ready to give up on this series. I’m quite glad I decided to plough through one more. I thought this was the best one in quite a while.
ECHOES IN DEATH by J.D. Robb
In start of this 44th book in the In Death series Eve and Rourke have just returned from a lovely vacation on their private island in time to attend the Winter Ball, a charity event. Eve, of course, hates every minute of the schmoozing, fancy dress and toe numbing heels. She was looking forward to getting back to work on Monday but work finds her as she and Rourke are driving home when a young woman, naked and beaten, runs out in front of their car. Eve Dallas is suddenly back on the job … heels and all.
They manage to rush Daphne Strazza to the ER in time to save her life, but when Eve goes back to investigate it is quite obviously to late for her husband. Daphne swears the devil himself broke into their home after a dinner party, tied up her husband and then repeatedly assaulted her. Eve understood that it couldn’t really have been the devil, but who was this master of disguise – who, as it turns out has targeted several other couples before and probably has a list of future victims as well.
With Echoes in Death Ms. Robb has gone back to what I enjoyed about these books at the beginning – the crime, the squad, the investigation and Rourke to go home to. It was a relief to me that Rourke took a little bit of a back seat in this one. Frankly, he was becoming annoyingly controlling and invasive of Eve’s space in the last few entries. Yes, he still helped with some computer work but this case was solved by good old police work. Well 2060’s style police work. Therein lies my only complaint with this book ... the solving of the case seemed to come out of the blue. All at once Eve seems to have an epiphany and the bad guy is in the interrogation room. Did I miss a chapter or two? Was it supposed to be a surprise or did Ms. Robb realize the page limit was looming and she better get this case solved.
Echoes in Death has ensured that I will pick up at least the next instalment.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR (from her website)
With a phenomenal career full of bestsellers, Nora Roberts was ready for a new writing challenge. As her agent put it, like Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, and caffeine-free Pepsi, a pseudonym offered her the opportunity to reach a new and different group of readers. The first futuristic suspense J. D. Robb book, Naked in Death, was published in paperback in 1995, and readers were immediately drawn to Eve Dallas, a tough cop with a dark past, and her even more mysterious love interest, Roarke.
The series quickly gained attention, great reviews, and devoted readers. Since the debut of Loyalty in Death (the ninth In Death book) on Halloween 1999 on the New York Times bestseller list, every J. D. Robb title has been a New York Times bestseller. While fans had their suspicions, it wasn’t until the twelfth book in the series, Betrayal in Death (2001), that the publisher fully revealed that J. D. Robb was a pseudonym for bestselling powerhouse Nora Roberts. Unmasked, Nora Roberts fans who hadn’t yet picked up one of the Robb books were quickly playing catch-up.
The In Death books are perpetual bestsellers, and frequently share the bestseller list with other Nora Roberts novels. J. D. Robb publishes two hardcover In Death books per year, with the occasional stand-alone original In Death story featured in an anthology.
Forty-four books later, there is no end in sight for the ever-popular In Death series.
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