PROMISES IN DEATH
J. D. Robb
Putnam Adult
Mystery
Hardcover: 9780399155482
Paperback: 9780425228944
J. D. Robb’s Eve Dallas novels, also known as the In Death series, are an institution. Robb, a pen name for the prolific Nora Roberts, publishes a Dallas thriller on the average of twice a year, with nary a complaint or chance of flooding the market. She has never been one to sacrifice quality for quantity. Everyone who has encountered the somewhat prickly Lieutenant Dallas, either as a casual reader of the series or as a religious one, has a favorite volume. Mine happens to be PROMISES IN DEATH, the latest installment in the series.
PROMISES IN DEATH is a classic whodunit, set in mid-21st century New York. The Big Apple of the future is different, though not radically so, from our own. It’s like encountering a one-time close friend you haven’t seen in 30 years; the edges are different, but the core is the same. This also applies to the New York Police Department. When an officer of theirs is murdered with her own weapon in her apartment building, the force takes it personally. And no one takes it more personally than Dallas, given that the victim is Detective Amarylis Coltraine. Li Morris, Coltraine’s significant other, is the Chief Medical Examiner and a close friend of Dallas’s.
Coltraine’s murder, for which there are at once no motives and a thousand, means that Dallas has a detective’s arsenal at her disposal, both official and unofficial. The latter would include the formidable, almost omnipresent, assets of Roarke, Dallas’s husband, whose seemingly limitless wealth, derived from sources legal and potentially otherwise, is quantified in terms of both money and information. It is found in due course that Coltraine’s past includes a link to that of Roarke and Dallas, one that may have indirectly resulted in her death.
Dallas slowly yet doggedly compiles and eliminates suspects, using a combination of psychology, investigative forensics and “tingles” (what the rest of us would call intuition), as she slowly but surely sees that justice is done not only for the victim but also for her friend. It is the mystery element here that arguably brings the book above its other (excellent) companion volumes. There are many suspects from which to choose, some more obvious than others. The key, as is often the case, lies in the past, and is one that will delight long-time readers of this venerable series and intrigue newer ones.
In PROMISES IN DEATH, as in other Dallas novels, Robb demonstrates that she is not afraid to tinker with the ongoing cast while ensuring that such changes actually mean something, with repercussions sure to play out over the course of several future installments. And while this series is aimed primarily at women, there is much for male readers to enjoy here as well.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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