Kindred in Death

By: JD Robb
Genre: Futuristic Suspense
Grade: A-

I've had a huge stack of library books to get through and it has not been fun. Honestly. Most especially the last four weren't books I was anxious to read and I actually pushed myself through them. Driving me was my guilt in overhearing a librarian gripe about how people didn't understand how wasteful it was for them to request books and not pick them up because the libraries had to pay for the transpo. I have never been quite that evil but have ever since felt like I owed it to the tax payers of my fair city to read the books I got on loan from other libraries. Fortunately, the handful left are books I have really, really wanted to read.

Kindred in Death is such a book. It stars, as do all the In Deaths, Detective, now Lt. Eve Dallas. She is on vacation, enjoying the life of the idle rich with her husband Roarke when she is tagged by her boss for a special assignment. A cop's daughter has been brutally murdered and it is up to Eve and her team to catch the killer. The crime scene is especially gruesome, the victim especially sweet and innocent. The killers errors are so minute they have to work hard at every lead to unravel them. Even as the evidence piles up, all is not as it would seem. And the ending leaves you wondering who is truly responsible for the crimes a man commits? Only the man himself? Or those who formed him?

It felt great to want to turn the pages as quickly as possible, a feeling missing from my last few novels. I was excited and happy when we reached each new milestone in the case and as anxious as Eve and her team to put it to bed. The minus is for two little quibbles. I would have like to have watched the trial alluded to at the end of the book. It would have made me oh so happy to watch that particular perp put into the cage he belonged in. Yes, we know it will happen but I wanted to see it, hear the description of how he felt going in. The second part of the minus is for the overuse of the word "solid". Seriously. Way overused.

I know Nora Robert's/J.D. Robb books lack the lyrical quality of the Curtis's writing or the technical skill of many another author but this book was refreshingly fun for me. In spite of the gruesomeness of some of the activity it was still a pleasure to read something so easy. If you have been reading the series, this is a worthy addition.

And I am not kidding when I say I am so, so happy to be down to three books in my library stack. And two of them I really, really want to read.

Tea: Iced and sweet. There is a scene that will explain it all if you read it.