Sometimes it's hard to believe we are already up to book fifty-nine in the In Death futuristic murder mystery series by J.D. Robb, who also writes as romance author Nora Roberts. PASSIONS IN DEATH, however, seems its age, with a lackluster story and not much new detail in the lives of Eve Dallas and her posse. I’m sure it can be hard to keep things fresh after so many years (nineteen years and counting)!
Robb’s In Death series is a police procedural set in the near future, in the 2060s. Eve Dallas is a lieutenant in the homicide division of the New York Police and Security Department, and she’s an absolute delight! She’s mouthy and cranky and has provided years of reading entertainment. She’s also nearly prescient in her detective work, and always gets her man (or woman) who is the killer. Eve is the best part of this series, but the massive cast of supporting characters also makes this series the overall enchantment that it is.
Eve’s got a dreamy husband, Roarke, who is a thief-turned-billionaire but somehow manages to find time to help her investigate her cases, acting as a civilian consultant. They butted heads early in the series as these two lone wolves learned to live with each other, but they’ve matured into a stable and tender marriage which is very comforting. Eve’s stalwart partner Peabody is a great foil for Eve, and the two women are competent and take charge, and I am here for it! Eve is typically surrounded by a large found family, although they are not much in evidence in PASSIONS IN DEATH and I miss seeing more of them here.
A joyful and boisterous bachelorette party has turned into a murder scene, eerily occurring at the site of a previous attack on Eve herself. There are not many twists or turns to the mystery this time. The solving of the case occurs by straightforward plodding through investigative work, so there is not the pizzazz that sometimes enlivens Robb’s murder plots. PASSIONS IN DEATH is a solid entry but not compelling, and I look hopefully forward to Robb’s return to more dizzying mysteries in future works.
On a hot August night, Lt. Eve Dallas and her husband, Roarke, speed through the streets of Manhattan to the Down and Dirty club, where a joyful, boisterous pre-wedding girls’ night out has turned into a murder scene. One of the brides lies in a pool of blood, garroted in a private room where she was preparing a surprise for her fiancée—two scrimped and saved-for tickets to Hawaii.
Despite the dozens of people present, useful witnesses are hard to come by. It all brings back some bad memories for Eve. In her uniform days, she’d suffered an assault in the very same room—but she’d been able to fight back and survive. She’d gotten justice. And now she needs to provide some for poor young Erin.
Eve knows that the level of violence and the apparent premeditation involved suggest a volatile mix of hidden, heated passion and ice-cold calculation. This is a crime that can be countered only by hard detective work and relentless dedication—and Eve will not stop until she finds the killer who destroyed this couple’s dreams before the honeymoon even began…
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