Category: Contemporary

Faithless in Death by J.D. Robb

On By BarbaraIn Barb's Reviews, Contemporary, MysteryLeave a comment

Faithless in Death (In Death, #52)
Barbara’s rating: 5 of 5 stars

Series: In Death #52
Publication Date: 2/9/21
Number of Pages: 416

This book is yet another edge-of-your-seat, suspenseful, engrossing, can’t-put-it-down offering by the inimitable J.D. Robb. I can never get enough of this series and if she produced one a week, I’d read it. The first book of the series was set in 2058 and after 52 books, we are only up to the spring of 2061. I’m definitely NOT complaining about the amount of time passing – New York Homicide cops get lots of cases. What amazes me is the imagination the author has and her thorough descriptions of life in that time and the gadgets – OMGoodness, the gadgets are wonderful! I sometimes have to wonder if Robb doesn’t have a bit of the ‘fey’ within her because – well – in the books she talks about the Urban Wars of the 20’s – and just look where we are today in the real-world 20’s. Since the series began in 1995, she couldn’t have known what the real 2020’s would be like. I hope she wasn’t right about all of it – but I do hope she was right about the gadgets – I’d love to have an AutoChef and a car that can go vertical.

This case comes just on the heels of the last case, Shadows In Death. Eve has gone in early to finish up all of the paperwork for that case when she gets the call from dispatch. A body has been found in the West Village. It is a lovely young woman, Ariel Byrd, who is an up-and-coming sculptor. Her head has been bashed in with one of her own tools. The body was only discovered because a 9-1-1 caller reported the dead body. That caller, Gwen Huffman, didn’t report it right away because she panicked and ran away from the scene. Or, did she panic?

Eve and Peabody are off on an investigation that is going to lead to some totally unexpected places and people. Such a ‘normal’, almost insignificant, crime leads to a vile cult named the Natural Order, missing FBI agents, and involvement by the FBI, Interpol, and Homeland Security. OMGoodness – you are in for a roller-coaster of an investigation in this one.

It takes Eve’s entire team, along with Roarke (we can never get enough of him), Feeney and McNab with the rest of the EDD team, not to mention Nadine Furst and ADA Reo to find the real villains and see that they are brought down and punished. I also loved that Police Artist Yancy was more involved in this case. He’s always been a favorite character but doesn’t usually get much page time.

I absolutely loved this read and can highly recommend it. I was left with a bit of a puzzler though. All of those Eve was focusing on finding we definitively solved – whether dead, injured, etc. except one. There was a mention that they thought he was probably dead, but since they wrapped up everyone else, I would have liked to learn, for sure, the fate of Keene Grimsley.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Angel by L.J. Ross

On By BarbaraIn Barb's Reviews, Contemporary, MysteryLeave a comment

Angel (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #4)My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Series: DCI Ryan Mysteries #4
Publication Date: 8/26/16
Number of Pages: 231

After their last case, DCI Ryan and his team are the stars of the show around Northumberland. The public is fickle though and when it becomes apparent there is a serial killer among them, they start demanding a quick solution. In this fast-paced, page-turning, can’t-put-it-down book, you’ll chase down the clues and put them together to find an unexpected and twisted villain at work.

In the early morning hours of a foggy, dreary, Good Friday in Newcastle upon Tyne, city gravedigger, Keith Wilson, drove his mini-digger machine into the West Road Cemetery. It might be a Bank Holiday, but death doesn’t wait for holidays. When he gets to the spot assigned for him to dig the grave, it appears to have already have a fresh burial. After checking with his dispatch and finding out he’s definitely at the correct spot, he looks at the grave and sees – OMGoodness, he sees a single dead eye, peering sightlessly at him through the soil.

DCI Ryan is at home with his fiancé Dr. Anna Taylor. The floor is strewn with wedding magazines. He loves her to distraction, but he just wants to get married, he doesn’t care what she chooses. So, when his mobile phone rings, and it flashes Control Room as the caller, he gleefully tells her – WORK!

The victim is a lovely red-haired lady in her early thirties who had been strangled. There is nothing to identify her, but she is posed to look like an Angel with arms overhead and blouse torn and spread to look like wings. Her burial site also included a note saying: Et ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. To Ryan’s surprise, DS Phillips recognizes that as being what a priest says when he is absolving the dead of their sins: ‘I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’. What sins did the murderer think this lovely young woman had committed?

Ryan’s team also catches another case, and since the two cases aren’t related, he assigns it to DI Denise MacKenzie and DC Jack Lowerson. MacKenzie and Lowerson step into a gruesome scene. The badly decomposed body of a sixty-five-year-old woman, lying on the floor of her home. She’s not a well-liked woman, so nobody notices that she hasn’t been seen for a week. It looks like they have their work cut out for them just to get a timeline for when she was last seen.

Ryan and Phillips feel the urgency to solve the case as the bodies of other red-headed, early-thirties, women are found in graves awaiting burials for other people. Who is killing these ladies? What sins have they committed for which they need absolution? Why are they posed as angels?

It takes all of Ryan’s team to finally identify and apprehend this twisted murderer. I figured out who it was early on, but there are lots of red-herrings and twists-and-turns to throw you off and make you doubt your suppositions.

I listened to the audiobook and thoroughly enjoyed the performance of the narrator.  I like his voice, but he does seem to have a narrower range of voices and it is often difficult to tell which character is speaking.