For example, part of Roarke’s old-fashioned way of looking at things is that he feels very strongly about violence against women. This would be great if it was grounded in a progressive and nuanced understanding of the broader cultural implications of gendered violence and the ways in which violence against women is often normalised or sexualised by society but it, well, isn’t. He just doesn’t hit girls. Yeah, the birth control thing did confuse me and, although I actually read this book a few weeks, I also seem to recall having the impression that there was some kind of special magic future disease solving thing going on. It’s sunset when Eve arrives at Roarke’s. She wants to do a computer run on Chief Simpson, but knows the minute she digs, she'll be flagged. She wonders if Roarke has a secured, unregistered system (which is illegal) that runs without alerting CompuGuard. Of course he does. Nadine is one of the intended victims of the murderer in Glory in Death, but is saved by Eve, who is the primary investigator on the case. She is an ambitious but ethical reporter, who will always protect her source. Nadine is a sharp dresser, a fact Eve finds odd.

I’m really worried by what I’ve said about plots now. I think I actually quite like mysteries but because I consume quite a lot of them (mostly on TV and in movies, rather than novels) I’m very aware that they can often be quite badly done. As I was saying in this review, I think it’s very easy t o build a mystery that just doesn’t make sense in retrospect because so often the way these things seem to be written is “work out the setup, work out the solution, glue them together in the middle.” It hardly matters if it is Nora Roberts you are reading or if it is J.D. Robb. You will be delighted. You will enjoy your romantic suspense married with crime and mystery regardless. The In Death book series takes you into the near future and stimulates all your emotions with aplomb like only J.D. Robb can. Violence against women and children is actually a recurring theme in the series. Both Eve and Roarke were raised in equally brutal circumstances. Their fathers were not nice men. It has shaped their lives – Roarke frequently remarks that they are “two lost souls” who created a happy life together against enormous odds. Roarke came out of it a little better because Summerset adopted him before he was completely grown, which gave him a more “normal” upbringing. (Eve and Summerset loathe one another at first sight, but slowly will appreciate each other’s place in Roarke’s world.) Eventually Roarke even funds a shelter for abused women and children, as a tribute to Eve.Ocr tesseract 4.1.1 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.10 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA18359 Openlibrary_edition Origin in Death (#21): This one is better as an audiobook and is key to understanding a lot of references made in the series after this point. I’m honestly a bit torn on the world building. I thought it had a very light touch, which I liked, but there were little bits of it where I wasn’t sure how they fit together or sort of how plausible they were. Maybe this is just my English stereotypes coming to the fore, but I really can’t imagine America banning guns within fifty years. They end up making love and it’s unlike anything either has ever experienced before, totally consuming them (148).

Two hours later, Eve leaves the office, heads for Roarke's. Feeney calls her while she's driving, tells her DeBlass has been released on his own recognizance. When she arrives at Roarke’s house, Summerset tells her that Roarke is not at home (278). They exchange barbs and Eve leaves. I think most long-running series take a while to get into their stride although I admit I find it faintly intimidating when I hear it takes the first seven to warm up, but gets really good after that. My main quibbles were with some exoticism that was evident in the depiction of the Asian ME, Morris, and the godawful purple prose description of Eve and Roarke’s sex life, but thankfully the latter only lasted a paragraph or two at a time and there were maybe three such “scenes.”Standard departmental procedure meant that she would spend the morning in Testing. Any officer whose discharge of weapon resulted in termination of life was required I think the thing that niggles at me just a little is the fact that it feels a bit like a visit from the misdirection fairy – that little magic pixie that visits mystery plots and makes people behave in bizarre and out-of-character ways so the audience doesn’t work out what’s really going on. The basic reason that I didn’t think it was the senator from the outset was that the killer caught the murder on tape, and the way Sharon behaves in the video didn’t strike me as the kind of way you would behave towards the abusive grandfather you hate. A problem I often have with mystery plots (and this extends far beyond Romance) is that they frequently feel like they were – for want of a better term – written from both ends at once. That is to say, like the writer came up with a setup (high class prostitute from wealthy political family murdered by client) and a solution (killer turns out to be abusive grandfather) and then tried to make them meet up in the middle, which leads to a lot of slightly wobbly seams where the two plots connect (in this case with the rationale leading to the victim accepting her abusive grandfather as a client). Oh gosh, I feel bad now. I suspect, and from what people have said, there’s a high degree of variation in the sorts of things that happen in the books.

Apart from some very very superficial features of the setting, Naked in Death didn’t actually strike me as being particularly dated. Obviously I’m not really in a position to talk about how the romance genre may or may not have evolved since 1995 but I didn’t get that jarring “oh my God, this was obviously written in the past” feeling you get with some of the older romances I’ve read. Or old sci-fi for that matter. Sorry, that got really long. I should probably stress that I have absolutely no problem with Roarke’s behaviour towards Eve in NAKED IN DEATH. It’s just that particular line, as I said above, presses a lot of my buttons. Again, I can understand why he says what he says and to an extent it’s not even the fact he says it that I have problem with, it’s that the book seemed to think he was right, or that he was expressing a noble sentiment. Visions in Death (#19): I love everything about this book, from the properly scary antagonist to a scene that never fails to make me cry toward the end, even though I first read this book nine years ago. When visiting Ireland, we discover that apparently the 21st century has passed it by, and much of it is beautiful and rural, which Eve finds disturbing (to Roarke’s amusement). Nora does much the same in her contemporary romances that are set in Ireland. I have enough trouble going into a series at book four, let alone book twenty eight. I’d just be too busy freaking out to appreciate it – although it does sound like an interesting set up, especially since I know where and how the series begins.Another detective from Homicide. Baxter enjoys teasing Eve about anything he can, usually relating to her relationship with Roarke and associated changes; despite this teasing Roarke views Baxter as a solid cop and easygoing person. She woke in the dark. Through the slats on the window shades, the first murky hint of dawn slipped, slanting shadowy bars over the bed. It was like waking in a cell. I agree, in general, that the thing that seems interesting about this series is that it has got a central relationship that develops over a long time. I’m not sure, but that seems pretty unusual for the genre, and I’d like to see how it works. I’ve got a vague impression that a recurring hero and heroine might be more common in romantic suspense but I have no idea where I’m getting that impression from.