Betrayal In Death

BETRAYAL IN DEATH by J.D. Robb
Berkeley Publishing Company - 2001
ISBN: 0425178579 - Paperback
Police Procedural
Futuristic New York City

Reviewed by Sue Bartroff, MyShelf.com
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By the time I reached the end of the first page of Naked in Death, the first in this series, I was a fan and when it slowly dawned on me by the end of the first chapter that these wonderful books took place in the future (the police car took off from a traffic jam and flew over it), I was calling bookstores all over town to find the rest of the books.

BETRAYAL IN DEATH, the most recent in the series, has all the components that make this a book you read through in a single sitting, even if you have to stay up all night to do it. Eve Dallas, the brilliant, complicated, emotionally scarred homicide detective represents the victims in the book. That's her job; to find out who took that person's life and Eve is dedicated to her job. Roarke, the richest man in the universe, a wild Irish business man who has not always been on the right side of the law, has been married less than a year to Eve and they are still figuring out how exactly marriage works. It is their relationship, set in a fairly fantastic future; that centers and grounds the series.

Syl Yost, a brutal serial killer, is picking off victims, apparently at random; but does the trail lead to Eve's past or Roarke's? Nora Roberts, writing as J.D.Robb, has a deft hand with characters and dialog. Her focus on detail gives a richness to all her works and provides a supporting cast in Feeney, Peabody and McNabb. This book, like the others, is a fine mix of murder, love, and justice. Sort of an Irish fairy tale for grownups; such fairy tales always having their dark side mixed among the humor and magic.