Naked in Death by J.D. Robb

 

Once again, we are pleased to have Kevin Tipple provide us with a guest review.  Kevin's own award-winning blogspot features reviews, news, and author interviews with an emphasis on the mystery genre.  Check out Kevin's Corner!

 

Naked in Death: Eve Dallas Mysteries (Book 1) is the first novel in a police procedural series that is set in 2058 according to the author’s website thought it is not actually specified in the book itself. AI is everywhere, there are flying cars, and more. Firearms, as we know them, are banned and those that remain are considered antiques and primarily in the possession of the wealthy people who collect them. Despite a technology driven future, there are still murders and a need for a police force.

As the book opens, Detective Eve Dallas awakens in her New York City apartment just a few hours after she killed a man. The fact that she ended his life does not haunt her at all. The fact she was unable to save the young child does. An issue she will need to hide as she goes through testing today so that she can go back to duty. 

At least that was her plan before the Commander sent her to a homicide at Twenty-Seven West Broadway on the eighteenth floor. Testing, for now, is out the window, because she is needed on this case and it is a high priority. Not only is she to be the main detective on the case, she is only to report to the commander, and a tight lid is in place. Once on scene, she soon learns why all the secrecy and the restrictions. 

It isn't every day the granddaughter of a U.S. Senator moves to New York and becomes a licensed companion (prostitute). Sharon DeBlass was that granddaughter and she is now very much dead in her bed. She was not stabbed or cut by a laser. Instead, she is a victim of three very strategically placed gunshots. Those gunshots and the gun used are very much a message sent by the killer to law enforcement and the public.

 Her grandfather is Senator DeBlass of Virginia. He comes from old money and is a very vocal champion of extreme right-wing politics. Why she was murdered and who killed the 24-year-old woman are the most obvious questions for Lieutenant Dallas. Clearly, it was not a suicide. The fact that her wounds were inflicted by gunshot, in this case, a .38 made many years before the gun ban, could be a political statement of some sort. That fact as well as the fact that the killer reported the death himself by way of video call after posing the body means this is not the work of a random killer acting out of a rage moment. This was a deliberately planned and orchestrated event. Lieutenant Dallas and her partner for this case, Ryan Feeney, have a bad one on their hands.

It also will not be the last. 

What follows is a complicated police procedural with a bit of romance that often becomes graphic. The story itself is highly entertaining despite the author's frequent pov head hops between the characters. In some paragraphs, two or more head hops happen in the same paragraph with a couple of sentences. That tends to be disconcerting to the reader as is the author’s technique of constantly shifting between third person and first throughout the read. One does tend to get used to it, after a while, but it does provide a distraction in otherwise entertaining story. 

Naked in Death: Eve Dallas Mysteries (Book 1), overall, is a complicated and very entertaining police procedural. Graphic in terms of the murders in the book as well as intimate moments between characters, it is not for every reader. Having had the series recommended to me by Lesa Holstine in a comment on her Faithless In Death review, who also pointed out there are fifty more books, I have my reading work cut out for me. Challenge accepted.

 

The second book in the series, Glory In Death, is on the way in large print to my local library branch.

 

 Naked in Death: Eve Dallas Mysteries (Book 1)

J. D. Robb

https://jdrobb.com/1995/07/naked-in-death/

Putnam

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/300636/naked-in-death-by-j-d-robb/9780593197455

1995

ISBN# 0399151575

Hardback (also available in audio, eBook, and paperback formats)

294 Pages

My read was an eBook version provided by Barry Ergang from his personal library after he saw my comment on Lesa Holstine’s recent review as noted above.

 

 

 

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