While I did enjoy the 18th installment in Robb’s In Death Series, it didn’t get the 5 star rating her previous books received because while all the ingredients which make this series a must read were present, they were sparsely applied & left me with a somewhat bland though filling read. The series revolves around a member of the NYPSD, Lt Eve Dallas in 2059, New York and her struggle to find justice for the victims of crimes she’s faced with daily while maintaining her sanity and strength. Along the way we’re introduced to the few key people in Eve’s life, the tethers that keep her grounded in the face of her painful past.
The integrity of the characters remain intact but I felt like she was going through the paces with the rest of the mystery. And I came to love this series pretty early on, not just for the characters but the grittiness with which the crime is laid out & its solving approached.
Lt Eve Dallas is a strong personality, a woman shaped into who she is by events of her past and the person she is now; a damn good cop, stands up for those just unfortunate enough to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, caught in the sights of the wrong person or the myriad other circumstances around which murder is carried out.
She’s methodical in her dissection of a crime scene, taking in every horror and injustice, putting herself in the victims & perpetrators shoes and taking us through the possibilities of why, when, what, how and why, so that I actually feel like I’m solving the crime right alongside her, running motives & probabilities though and trying to come up with an answer. But in this case, I felt like I was being teased; held at bay with a mystery that just wasn’t explored as it deserved to be.
The crime in question : the rape, mutilation & murder of a young woman in Central Park, New York. When Elisa Maplewood is found dead, eyes cut-out, brutally beaten & posed with hands clasped just beneath the red cord tied tight around her neck, Lt Dallas & Detective Peabody are tasked with finding the killer and bringing him to justice.
New York’s parks are soon turned into sites of death & horror when more women start turning up dead and a psychic claiming to ‘see’ the killer as he stalks and kills his victims puts herself in Eve’s sights. Is she a psychic ? Or does she have a more sinister reason for coming forward ?
Well, I wont give it away. But I will say there is a plot twist at the end and I have to give the author credit for planting almost subliminal suggestions because while I wasn’t completely blown away by it, I remained surprised while knowing that in my mind, I had processed the possibility of this twist.
4 stars or not, I’m still looking forward to reading the next book in the In Death series.
