Thursday, November 9, 2017

Review: Ritual in Death by J.D. Robb

Title: Ritual in Death
Series: In Death
Author: J.D. Robb
Read copy: eBook (Kindle)
Published: October 11, 2012
Publisher: Piatkus
ASIN: B0099V1YKQ

When a high-society party is crashed by a naked, knife-wielding, blood-covered man who "thinks" he might have killed someone, Eve Dallas must track down the crime, and the criminals. Everything points to Satanic ritual, but Eve doesn't believe in devil worship...

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Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Review: Salvation in Death by J.D. Robb

Title: Salvation in Death
Series: In Death
Author: J.D. Robb
Read copy: eBook (Kindle)
Published: NOvember 4, 2008
Publisher: Berkley
ASIN: B0015DYL5Q

When Lieutenant Eve Dallas confirms that the consecrated wine contained potassium cyanide, she’s determined to solve the murder of Father Miguel Flores, despite her discomfort with her surroundings. It’s not the bodegas and pawnshops of East Harlem that bother her, though the neighborhood is a long way from the stone mansion she shares with her billionaire husband, Roarke. It’s all that holiness flying around at St. Christobal’s that makes her uneasy.

A search of the victim’s sparsely furnished room reveals little—except for a carefully hidden religious medal with a mysterious inscription, and a couple of underlined Bible passages. The autopsy reveals more: faint scars of knife wounds, a removed tattoo—and evidence of plastic surgery, suggesting that “Father Flores” may not have been the man his parishioners had thought. Now, as Eve pieces together clues that hint at gang connections and a deeply personal act of revenge, she believes she’s making progress on the case. Until a second murder—in front of an even larger crowd of worshippers—knocks the whole investigation sideways. And Eve is left to figure out who committed these unholy acts—and why.


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Monday, November 6, 2017

Review: Strangers in Death by J.D. Robb

Title: Strangers in Death
Series: In Death
Author: J.D. Robb
Read copy: eBook (Kindle)
Published: February 18, 2008
Publisher: Berkley
IASIN: B000UZNRP0

Technology may be different in 2060 New York, yet the city is still a place of many cultures and great divides. But as ever, some murders receive more attention than others—especially those in which the victim is a prominent businessman, found in his Park Avenue apartment, tied to the bed—and strangled—with cords of black velvet.

It doesn't surprise Lieutenant Eve Dallas that Thomas Anders's scandalous death is a source of titillation and speculation to the public—and of humiliation to his family. But while people in the city are talking about it, those close to Anders aren't so anxious to do the same. With some help from her billionaire husband, Roarke, Eve's soon knocking on doors—or barging through them—to find answers.

But the facts don't add up. Physical evidence suggests that the victim didn't struggle. The security breach in the apartment indicates that the killer was someone known to the family, but everyone's alibi checks out. Was this a crime of passion in a kinky game gone wrong—or a meticulously planned execution? It's up to Dallas to solve a case in which strangers may be connected in unexpected, and deadly, ways.


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Sunday, November 5, 2017

Review: Eternity in Death by J.D. Robb

Title: Eternity In Death
Series: In Death
Author: J.D. Robb
Read copy: eBook (Kindle)
Published: September 6, 2012
Publisher: Piatkus
ASIN: B008Y15GDS

When club-hopping bad girl Tiara Kent is found dead in her plush Manhattan apartment, the killing has all the earmarks of a vampire attack. The ever-practical Lieutenant Eve Dallas has to deal with superstitious cops carrying garlic and stakes, as well as the ever-hysterical press. None of the wealthy young victim's friends seem to know much about the Dark Prince she has been secretly seeing. The chase to stop him before he kills again will lead Eve and her team into areas of the city that not even the most intrepid cop wants to visit, and into the very heart of darkness.

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Review: Creation in Death by J.D. Robb

Title: Creation in Death
Series: In Death
Author: J.D. Robb
Read copy: eBook (Kindle)
Published: November 30, 2007
Publisher: Berkley
ASIN: B000W915UI

Eve has seen this crime scene before: the artfully arranged body of a young brunette, arms spread, palms up, body marked by the signs of prolonged and painful torture. Carved into her torso is the time it took her to die—in hours, minutes, and seconds. And on the third finger of her left hand has been placed a silver ring.

Eve is catapulted back to a case nine years earlier, when a man whom the media tagged 'The Groom' put the city on edge with a killing spree that took the lives of four women in fifteen days. Eve and her partner Feeney, her friend and mentor, couldn't stop him before he disappeared, only to resurface in other parts of the world to kill and kill again. But now The Groom seems to have come back to where he started.

When it turns out that The Groom's most recent victim was employed by Eve's billionaire husband, Roarke, she brings him onto the case. A move that proves fitting when it becomes chillingly clear that the killer has made it personal. The corpse was washed in products from a store Roarke owns and laid out on a sheet his company manufactures. With the Groom's monstrous return, Eve is determined to finish him once and for all. Familiar with his methods, she knows that he has already grabbed his next victim.

But his sights are set on the biggest challenge of his illustrious career—an abduction that will test his skills and that promises to give him satisfaction as he's never known. Time is running out on another woman's life—and for Eve.


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Friday, November 3, 2017

Review: Innocent in Death by J.D. Robb

Title: Innocent in Death
Series: In Death
Author: J.D. Robb
Read copy: eBook (Kindle)
Published: February 20, 2007
Publisher: Berkley
ASIN: B000O76NEQ

New York Lieutenant Eve Dallas doesn't like to see innocent people murdered. And the death of Craig Foster is clearly a murder. He was seemingly ordinary history teacher, but uncovers some extraordinary surprises. Foster's death devastated his young wife, who'd sent him to work that day with a lovingly packed lunch. It shocked his colleagues at the private school, too, and as for the ten-year-old girls who found him in his classroom in a pool of bodily fluids—they may have been traumatized for life.

Eve soon determines that Foster's homemade lunch was tainted with deadly ricin, and that Mr. Foster's colleagues have some startling secrets of their own. It's Eve's job to sort it out—and discover why someone would have done this to a man who seemed so inoffensive, so pleasant...so innocent.

Now Magdalena Percell...there's someone Eve can picture as a murder victim. Possibly at Eve's own hands. The slinky blonde—an old flame of her billionaire husband, Roarke—has arrived in New York, and she's anything but innocent. Roarke seems blind to Magdalena's manipulation, and he insists that the occasional lunch or business meeting with her is nothing to worry about...and none of Eve's business. Consumed by her jealousy—and Roarke's indifference to it, she is unnerved by the situation that she finds it hard to focus on her case. Still, she'll have to put aside her feelings, for a while at least—because another man has just turned up dead.

Eve knows all too well that innocence can be a facade. Keeping that in mind may help her solve this case at last. But it may also tear apart her marriage.


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Thursday, November 2, 2017

Review: Born in Death by J.D. Robb

Title: Born in Death
Series: In Death
Author: J.D. Robb
Read copy: eBook (Kindle)
Published: November 7, 2006
Publisher: Berkley
ASIN: B000PDYVSE

Eve Dallas has a grisly double homicide to solve when two young lovers—both employees of the same prestigious accounting firm—are brutally killed on the same night. It doesn't leave Eve a lot of leftover time to put together a baby shower for her buddy Mavis, but that's supposedly what friends are for.

Now Mavis needs another favor. Tandy Willowby, one of the moms-to-be in Mavis's birthing class, didn't show up for the shower. A recent emigrant from London, Tandy has few friends in New York, and no family—and she was really looking forward to the party. And when Eve enters Tandy's apartment and finds a gift for Mavis's shower wrapped and ready on the table—and a packed bag for the hospital still on the floor next to it—tingling runs up and down her spine.

Normally, such a case would be turned over to Missing Persons. But Mavis wants no one else on the job but Eve—and Eve can't say no. She'll have to track Tandy down while simultaneously unearthing the deals and double-crosses hidden in the files of some of the city's richest and most secretive citizens, in a race against this particularly vicious killer. Luckily, her multimillionaire husband Roarke's expertise comes in handy with the number crunching. But as he mines the crucial data that will break the case wide open, Eve faces an all too real danger in the world of flesh and blood.


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