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Naked in Death

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And as with any series, long-running or otherwise, some books work better than others. Which ones work or not is different for each reader. What I love most about the series is that we get the ongoing relationship between Eve and Roarke, and Eve and the various supporting characters (there are a lot of them after so many books!) and those scenes often save the book for me when the mystery is not one I like. In some books we know who the killer(s) is right away and the book is more about how Eve catches them. Others are more of a whodunit. But even though only a few years have passed in book time there are no cliff-hanger endings. In each book you get a complete story. It’s midnight when she gets to bed. Roarke calls her, tells her to rest up for their next encounter. After the call, Roarke wonders why she matters so much to him. I … don’t know who any of those people are, so I’d probably be able to adapt to audiobooks a little bit more easily. Although, like you, I do find listening to audio versions of books I know really well quite jarring sometimes, because you tend to have developed quite set ideas about what the characters sound like.

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. Ali, Kecia, Human in Death: Morality and Mortality in J. D. Robb's Novels (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2017). ISBN 9781481306270

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I should probably stress here that I’m talking about the trope in general, not its specific instance in NAKED IN DEATH. I’d actually very much expected it to be difference form romance Nora(noH) Roberts, but I’ve only read one of her books anyway. So, in my case, I think it’s just that people have been so enthusiastic that I’d just sort of generically expected to like it more than I did. Note: "stunner" and "laser" are both terms used interchangeably for the fictional weapons that the NYPSD carry in the In Death books; they release a strong electrical, laser-like stun that can do anything from incapacitating to killing the victim. Obviously I’m not sure, but I think for Roarke to work you have to be really into the type of hero that he is. In retrospect, I do agree that Roarke’s criminal past is treated somewhat bizarrely at least in the one book I’ve read so far in that, as you say, making a lot of money out of crime often involves doing some quite reprehensible things. But Eve’s misgivings about Roarke’s past tend to be presented as a sort of charming peccadillo rather than as serious, legitimate concerns about the sort of person you are choosing to spend the rest of your life with.

I have re-read/re-listened to some of the books – strangely enough, Naked in Death worked better for me the first time. The second time, I saw more of the flaws and I questioned what exactly brought them together – but it totally worked for me on first reading. I don’t share the no-love for Glory in Death however.

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Eve is summoned to Cop Central to be on the team that interrogates Simpson. Simpson admits that he was paying Sharon DeBlass and his lawyers immediately intervene. Catherine tells of how her father sexually abused her for years as a child, until she went away to college. She got married, told nobody about the abuse. She realized her father was then abusing Sharon DeBlass, and insists that he killed Sharon. She had once overheard Sharon threaten the senator with exposure, saying she had documented all of the abuse (261). I guess I self-define as a man who does not resort to violence to solve his problems, so I don’t see why women need a separate sub-clause. Basically the circumstances in which I’d hit a woman are exactly the same as the circumstances in which I’d hit a man: self-defence, sparring and extreme vengeance because they’d like murdered my brother or something (and, even then, I’d probably actually just go to the police). Lance Abrams, John Burke, Joseph Cattery, Paul Garrison, D B Graham, Travis Greenspan, Evie Hydelburg, Wendy McMahon, Cherie Quinz, Cate Simpson, Hilly Simpson, Macie Snyder, Amie Stewart, Gwen Talbert, Brenden Wang, Katrina and 68 unnamed victims. I was also bothered by how spooky perfect the killer wound up being. It turns out that all of the murders after the first (which was sort of an accident) were carried out by the Senator’s aide – an ex-paramilitary type who suggests to the Senator that the best way to cover up his granddaughter’s death is to use the tried and tested “pretend it’s a serial killer” strategy. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this plan in a whole bunch of sources, although I first remember seeing it in the 1998 BBC series In the Red, in which the murders of a string of bank managers turn out to be a smokescreen thrown up by a guy who wants to kill his bank manager brother.

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. 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 think predictability is an inevitable consequence of a series going on for a really long time. In a sense it’s sort of a Catch 22, either you change things so much that the series is no longer like it was when it started and the books no longer have the features that people were originally reading them for, or you don’t in which case, after thirty something books, things are bound to get a bit samey. I agree that there are too many books featuring serial killers. There are also a few books made more interesting because Eve sides (inwardly, at least) with the murderers. I’d like to see more of those. Many of the male serial killers are too similar. The women who kill are more interesting, as a rule. Roarke meets her at the airport and (after an argument) they fly to Virginia together (252). En route, Eve calls Feeney, who found the diaries in the safe-deposit box. Eve and Roarke head for the DeBlass home.

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