Review: Festive in Death by J.D. Robb

festive in death by jd robbFormat read: ebook borrowed from the library
Formats available: ebook, hardcover, large print paperback, audiobook
Genre: mystery
Series: In Death, #39
Length: 390 pages
Publisher: Putnam Adult
Date Released: September 9, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Personal trainer Trey Ziegler was in peak physical condition. If you didn’t count the kitchen knife in his well-toned chest.
Lieutenant Eve Dallas soon discovers a lineup of women who’d been loved and left by the narcissistic gym rat. While Dallas sorts through the list of Ziegler’s enemies, she’s also dealing with her Christmas shopping list—plus the guest list for her and her billionaire husband’s upcoming holiday bash.
Feeling less than festive, Dallas tries to put aside her distaste for the victim and solve the mystery of his death. There are just a few investigating days left before Christmas, and as New Year’s 2061 approaches, this homicide cop is resolved to stop a cold-blooded killer.

My Review:

I love this series, and every time I read one, I get a different answer as to why.

For one thing, Dallas’ version of deadpan snarker makes me laugh every single time. She has all the gallows humor of a career police officer, combined with a nearly complete lack of reference to what other people think is normal.

There’s a running gag in Festive in Death that cliches and proverbs make zero sense when analyzed. Which is true in every single example that comes up. And every time Eve tries to parse one out, she sends Roarke down a verbal rabbithole that drags him completely off his original topic. They are absolutely marvelous together.

A lot of this particular story is about family. For Eve and Roarke, the Christmas season is all about the “family you make”. Or in their case, watching the families that each of them has made continue to blend together into a single, slightly crazy, whole.

Their crazy-in-a-good-way but slightly dysfunctional family is contrasted directly with the family of two of the suspects in this episode’s murder-of-the-week.

At first, Eve isn’t sure that they ARE suspects. What is certain is that they were victims of the recently deceased scumbag, and that the way that he victimized them gives them and their families strong motives for murdering him.

This case was a bit different in that no one is mourning the dead jerk. Even Dallas is slightly conflicted; she’s not sorry he’s dead, at least partially because it robs her of the opportunity to lock him up for a couple of decades.

Trey Ziegler was a personal trainer who did not stick to his day job. He also fucked his clients for money and favors, which makes him a prostitute. In Eve’s version of the future, Licensed Companion is a profession, and yes, notice the licensed. Unlicensed selling of sex for money is still illegal. But Ziegler went two better (or worse). He used date-rape drugs to remove his clients’ inhibitions, and then he blackmailed them for having seemingly given in.

As I said, dead scumbag leaving plenty of victims with motives behind him.

Two of the many women he screwed over were sisters, which creeps both of them out. But even more scummy, he was also blackmailing one sister’s jerkwad husband over keeping a mistress using his rich wife’s money.

The problem that Eve has to solve is not who had motive and opportunity, or even who benefits (dead blackmailer lets lots of people off the hook), but whose applecart did the guy most threaten to upset?

In the middle of dealing with, and sometimes running away from, the biggest Christmas party that Eve and Roarke have ever hosted, Eve worries away at solving the crime. The person she wants to be the murderer is scummy, but may not quite be scummy enough.

It’s only when the killer claims a second victim that Eve finally puts it all together.

Escape Rating B+: I pored through this one until late in the night. It was just plain fun to read, and there were lots of laugh out loud moments.

But what I enjoyed was watching Eve and Roarke’s family celebrate the holidays. Eve is starting to see this very mixed gang of cops and corporate types as their family, and it’s a revelation for her. Also, as unsocialized as she sometimes is, seeing her see and feel that there are some things you just suck up because, well, family was a lot of growth that happens without going back to the angst-factory.

Eve’s intense dislike of parties, socializing and being the center of attention does not count as angst. It usually counts as funny.

obsession in death by jd robbI love these people, not just Eve and Roarke but the entire gang. I can’t wait to find out how they’re doing after Christmas in Obsession in Death.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: The Collector by Nora Roberts

collector by nora robertsFormat read: hardcover borrowed from the library
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genre: romantic suspense
Length: 496 pages
Publisher: Putnam
Date Released: April 15, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

When professional house-sitter Lila Emerson witnesses a murder/suicide from her current apartment-sitting job, life as she knows it takes a dramatic turn. Suddenly, the woman with no permanent ties finds herself almost wishing for one. . . .
Artist Ashton Archer knows his brother isn’t capable of violence—against himself or others. He recruits Lila, the only eyewitness, to help him uncover what happened. Ash longs to paint her as intensely as he hungers to touch her. But their investigation draws them into a rarified circle where priceless antiques are bought, sold, gambled away, and stolen, where what you possess is who you are, and where what you desire becomes a deadly obsession. . . .

My Review:

I picked this up over the weekend instead of any of the fifteen other things I should have been reading because, well, Nora Roberts writing romantic suspense again. When she’s good, she’s very, very good. And The Collector was definitely one of the good ones!

There are shades of the movie Rear Window in the suspense part of this story, as professional house-sitter Lila Emerson witnesses a murder by people watching from the patio of her current gig. She sees someone shove a woman out of the window of a highrise to her splattered death on the pavement below. She’s on the phone with 911 as she watches the argument across the way escalate from abuse to death.

That should be the end of Lila’s involvement, all most of us would do is give our statements to the police and go on about our lives. Not that it wouldn’t affect us, but that we wouldn’t become more and more enmeshed in the investigation and the lives of the people affected by that one plummeting fall.

Lila can’t seem to resist involvement. Everywhere and with everything, but only to a limited extent. She lives her life out of two suitcases, constantly moving from house-sitting to apartment-sitting, always traveling and never putting down roots. But she’s a professional at getting people to open up and tell her their life stories.

While that is partly the fodder for her successful writing career, it is also her way of blending in to her environment. As a military brat, she was always packing up, moving on, and trying to make a place for herself in a new home. Now she does it by choice.

Ashton Archer is involved because he feels has no choice. His brother Oliver was on the other side of that window where Lila witnessed the murder, and Oliver is also dead. At first, the police tried to write the combined deaths off as murder-suicide, but the forensic evidence ruled that possibility out fairly quickly. Which means that both his brother and his girlfriend were murdered by a third party.

Ashton, used to cleaning up his brother’s messes and taking care of entire extremely extended family, steps in to try to find justice in his brother’s case. Or failing that, vengeance. Ashton’s road to answers leads through Lila.

Unfortunately for them both, someone else’s road to riches leads through the same case. for those people, Lila and Ashton are messy loose ends that need to be tied up. Permanently.

Escape Rating A-: This combination of suspense, romance and treasure hunting turned into a story that I couldn’t break away from. There were multiple storylines packed into this one case, and every single one revolved around a fascinating and/or very likeable character.

Lila and Ashton start out as slightly wary allies. He needs to investigate his brother’s murder. She can’t let the mystery go. But as they join forces to solve the crime, they become intimately involved with each other, in spite of Lila’s deep inner need to control her own life, and Ashton’s inability to stop controlling the lives of the people he cares for. Even as they fall for each other, the peace between them is often uneasy. It takes a long but realistic amount of time for them to work toward compromise in their personal relationship.

125px-PeterthegreateggThe suspense part of the story combined present-day art theft with a marvelous history lesson into the creation and collection of the famous Fabergé Eggs commissioned by the Russian Tsars.

Everything that has happened has been about one of the lost Fabergé Eggs, The Cherub with Chariot (and it really is lost) and one man’s obsession with possessing it. Oliver found it and tried to double-cross someone who was much too big for him, and the result has left a number of bodies in the wake. A collector who wants it not only bad enough to kill for it, but who keeps an assassin on his payroll just to clear up his loose ends.

The assassin is every bit as important (and interesting) a character as the hero and heroine. She lives to kill, and to collect prizes from her victims, and she’s targeting Lila and Ash because they keep showing her up.

The story is the dance between Lila, Ashton and the assassin Jai, and it’s a perfectly performed Russian troika, right up until the end.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.