Sixty seconds in the In Death series, STOLEN IN DEATH by J.D. Robb brings us another fairly fun installation in this looooong-running futuristic murder mystery/police procedural series. There are so many components of this series that make it enjoyable. Lieutenant Eve Dallas is cool and capable, a truly kickass heroine. Eve and her gazillionaire husband, Roarke, have a deep and abiding love that provides a lovely underpinning of romance. The large circle of friends and found family also flesh out the series with a huge backdrop of secondary characters that enliven the crime-solving.
The books in the In Death series have two main layers or points of focus: the crime being solved and then what’s happening in Dallas’ group of friends. As this thirty-year- long series continues (wow!), sometimes one of these two layers is a dud. Here, STOLEN IN DEATH brings us some tricky crime details that make it interesting. Likewise, the storyline involving Roarke here seems like it could become pretty high-stakes.
A wealthy man is found murdered by his wife, lying just outside a vault that everyone in the family disavows all knowledge of and that contains hundreds of priceless stolen objects of art. This by itself could make an exciting whodunnit, but the truly exciting point for Robb fans is that the Royal Suite, a legendary group of emerald jewelry, has been stolen a second time from this secret vault. The first thief to liberate this parure several decades ago was Roarke, who committed the relevant museum heist as a precocious teenager. Can Lieutenant Eve Dallas catch the killer without catching up Roarke in the investigative web as well? Keeping her husband out of the hands of Interpol while keeping her own hands clean may prove a challenge!
This is the first time the author has directly addressed the fact that a multi-billionaire who runs his own financial empire is wasting so much of his time doing investigative scutwork, both electronics investigation as well as physical security backup, for his wife and her police department job. At 62 books into the series, I feel like this is long overdue, and it still seems inadequate. The wife of the murdered man asks Rourke why he’s helping the New York City Police and Security Department. Rourke’s reply: “I have a great need to help her,” her being his wife.
With so many books in the series, some entries are naturally more intriguing than others. STOLEN IN DEATH is probably best suited for longstanding fans of the series who are invested in the relationships. Readers new to Eve Dallas would be much better served to turn to early books in the series, which stand more on crime and investigation and less on the intricacies of the many interpersonal relationships in Robb’s writing.
A blow to the head with a block of amethyst has left multibillionaire Nathan Barrister dead—while nearby, a vault, its door ajar, sits filled with priceless paintings, jewelry, and other treasures. Lieutenant Eve Dallas’s husband, Roarke—who misspent his youth in Ireland as a scrappy thief—recognizes at least two stolen pieces among the hoard. The crime scene suggests a burglar caught in the act. But only one item seems to be missing.
Then it’s revealed that the vault had actually belonged to the victim’s late father—and no one in the household knew it was there until a recent remodeling project exposed it. To protect the family name and business, they explain to Eve, they’d been looking for a way to return the ill-gotten gains anonymously and avoid the police. But now the police are all over their elegant house, and have a bigger, bloodier mystery to solve.
By all accounts, Nathan Barrister was a good man, a generous employer, a devoted husband and father. As for his father—he clearly had secrets. Now it’s up to Eve and her team to find out if those secrets got Nathan killed—and if it was a crime of passion or revenge.
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