Stolen in Death (In Death, #62) by J.D. Robb
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: futuristic, mystery, romantic suspense, suspense, thriller
Series: In Death #62
Pages: 368
Published by St. Martin's Press on February 3, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A violent death and a vault of stolen treasures has Eve Dallas struggling to solve crimes old and new in the latest thriller in the #1 New York Times-bestselling series.
A blow to the head with a block of amethyst has left multibillionaire Nathan Barrister dead―while nearby, a vault, its door ajar, sits filled with priceless paintings, jewelry, and other treasures. Lieutenant Eve Dallas’s husband, Roarke―who misspent his youth in Ireland as a scrappy thief―recognizes at least two stolen pieces among the hoard. The crime scene suggests a burglar caught in the act. But only one item seems to be missing.
Then it’s revealed that the vault had actually belonged to the victim’s late father―and no one in the household knew it was there until a recent remodeling project exposed it. To protect the family name and business, they explain to Eve, they’d been looking for a way to return the ill-gotten gains anonymously and avoid the police. But now the police are all over their elegant house, and have a bigger, bloodier mystery to solve.
By all accounts, Nathan Barrister was a good man, a generous employer, a devoted husband and father. As for his father―he clearly had secrets. Now it’s up to Eve and her team to find out if those secrets got Nathan killed―and if it was a crime of passion or revenge.

My Review:

This 62nd entry in the In Death series was a whole lot of fun with just a bit of angst to give it spice – and an extra body or two.

Well, it’s fun for the reader. In the end, it’s also fun for Dallas’ bosses, Commander Whitney and Chief Tibble, as they get to go out and arrest a murderer who really, really deserves it. Although THAT scenario does make Dallas more than a bit nervous. After all, it’s been a while since these two gentlemen have been out on the street. It wouldn’t be good for her career if she lost the NYPSD’s top brass in an operation, no matter how big, whether they (eagerly and enthusiastically) volunteered for the duty or not.

But there’s just a bit of angst in this case for Dallas and Roarke. Not the crime itself, but all the crimes that it leads back to. Some of which, back in the days before he met Dallas, were Roarke’s.

A man is dead, to begin with. That’s where the stories in this series usually begin. This particular death also begins in a scenario that Dallas has often imagined but doesn’t really wish would happen. Mostly.

She’s at a big deal charity gala, dressed to the nines, in painfully sharp high heels. Or at least that’s how the evening began – the part where she imagines that she wouldn’t mind getting rescued by a timely murder somewhere else. But just when it’s gotten to the good parts, with Dallas and Roarke and their friends closing down a truly swanky bar, she gets the call that there’s been a homicide at an equally swanky personal residence.

So off she goes to the home of Nathan Barrister, dead on the scene, while she’s still dressed to hobnob with the rich and famous. Which is exactly what she’s doing at Barrister’s residence. It’s just that the man himself is dead, in the midst of what looks like an interrupted burglary, with a floor-to-ceiling safe full of priceless stolen treasures gaping open and sparkling behind his body.

That vault is a very shiny Pandora’s Box. The contents, one and all, were stolen – and famously so. Many if not most of them were stolen when Nathan Barrister was literally still in short pants, much too young to have been the planner or the buyer of these very hot commodities. His dear old dad, Henry Barrister, very much on the other hand, was a self-made billionaire many times over, and had just the right sort of acquisitive personality to have bought and paid for both the goods AND the actual theft of them.

That the last decade or so of Barrister senior’s acquisition of his very private collection overlapped, just barely, with Roarke’s own career as a high end thief adds more layers to the already complex puzzle. Because the most famous piece in that collection was definitely one of Roarke’s early jobs – even though he was never caught. Not that he wasn’t suspected of being part of the crew that stole the Royal Suite of emeralds. But there was no crew, and there were no breadcrumbs leading back to him. Now he’s on the straight and narrow, with a cop for a wife who wouldn’t have him any other way, and neither of them can afford to have that old crime traced back to him.

He’s confident that it won’t be. Dallas is trying her best to be just as confident that he’s right.

But Senior has been dead for months by the time his son gets murdered over the Royal Suite, which has been stolen (again) straight out of a vault that not even the family knew existed until after the old man was gone. Whatever he was responsible for then – he can’t be responsible for the theft and murder now.

Or can he?

Escape Rating B+: This book reminded me a lot of last week’s Make It Out Alive. The two cop shops are a bit similar, and the teams both scratch the same ‘competence porn’ itch when I read them. In particular, these two books reminded me of each other because they had the same feel to them.

As I was reading, I was absolutely riveted in both cases. The pace was relentless and the story absolutely pulled me along at breakneck speeds. Both were one-day, one-sitting reads – even if my seat did move around the house a bit while I read.

But both stories suffered from a bit of ‘villain fail’. The villain in Make It Out Alive was more of a caricature than a character. The real villains in Stolen in Death, well, one was so obvious I saw it way before Dallas did. The whydunnit took a bit longer, but the whodunnit was entirely too easy.

The other villain was all wrapped up in the reasons why Dallas wasn’t quite as confident that Roarke’s past wasn’t about to come back and bite them as he was, because it already was. Just as the Royal Suite was from one of his jobs back in the day, so was the second villain. Magdelana Percell has tried to get Roarke back before, particularly in Innocent in Death – which she wasn’t, either then, now OR dead – and it didn’t work AT ALL. In the end of that story, Dallas punched the woman in the face for her presumption. That Magdelana’s back to either try yet again with Roarke or stick it to both of them for THEIR rejection represented a fascinating blast from the past that managed not to go all the way to the angst factory yet still created plenty of additional tension.

Along with a reminder that, while the series began publishing in our world in 1995 with Naked in Death, the time that has elapsed within the books began in 2058, and has only progressed to 2061 by the time of this story. That’s a mere THREE years for Dallas and Roarke, but THIRTY-ONE years for the reader. Something that this book very much reminds us of as Dallas is 33 in this book and Roarke is 37. It seems like a long time has passed since the first book, and it has FOR US, but not for them.

This series is always a comfort read for me, and this entry was no exception. I loved catching up with the progress on Peabody’s and McNab’s (and Mavis’, Leonardo’s and Bella’s) new house, Detective Sergeant Jenkinson’s latest eye-watering ties and especially Galahad’s ongoing campaign to steal breakfast from his humans. The case wasn’t the biggest or most complicated one that Dallas has ever solved, but watching her team’s process of pulling together the complex web of threads was as fun as ever. That this particular investigation held a dark thread of angst on Dallas’ part regarding Roarke getting caught over his ‘former’ career added a layer of tension even as his smugness over his previous accomplishments lightened the mood while they each worried about the consequences to the other.

All in all, and as always, I’m happy to have had another opportunity to see how all my ‘book friends’ are doing, and I’m already looking forward to the next book in the series, Fury in Death, coming in September.