Conspiracy in Death by
J.D. Robb
pbk out June 04
(Piatkus)
at £5.99
Nora Roberts has written more than a hundred books, including 86 New York
Times bestsellers - and has over two hundred million copies in print, so anything
I say about this one is pretty irrelevant!
As J D Robb, she writes a series whose titles all end in 'in Death', about a fiesty
New York Detective Lieutenant named Eve Dallas.
The series is set in 2059, though the futuristic element is fairly minimal, the Big
Apple sounding much the same as now, except for faster vehicles, some
androids and a far wider gap between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots', who seem
to populate the streets in cardboard boxes.
Eve, a former abused child who killed her foul father, is a paragon of virtue and
efficiency, devoted to her profession, though now married to Roarke, a reformed
criminal from the slums of Dublin, who is now one of the richest men in the
world and various other planets, as well as being the most handsome and
charming guy ever. Eve goes to work each day from his palace in New York and
in this book is called to a sidewalk shanty where the drop-out occupant has had
his heart taken out, the removal showing the most exquisitely perfect surgical
expertise - hence the perpetrators must be specialist surgeons. She falls foul of a
uniformed policewoman who persecutes her with complaints and is then found
murdered, for which poor Eve gets the blame and has her badge taken from her,
which sends her into paranoid depression. Similar organ thefts are discovered
elsewhere and the hunt is on for the baddies amongst the medical fraternity. As
Eve recovers her grim determination to get her badge back, the fabulous Roarke
helps by fair means and foul, including his fantastic ability in computer hacking
to get data which the law enforcement agencies cannot. The climax is the defeat
of the wicked doctors' plot to eliminate Eve and all ends happily ever after.
The writing is fine, especially if you like breathless drama on every page; there
is a commercial break for athletic sex every few chapters (Roarke is the world's
best lover as well) and the romance and emotion are ladled on with a shovel. In
the blurb, the books are described as 'novels of romantic suspense, and to me,
the overall effect is of a police procedural novel having been re-written by
Barbara Cartland and published by Mills and Boon - but two hundred million
punters obviously lap them up.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
Conspiracy in Death by
J.D. Robb
