#JD Robb

[theloneliestblackgirlblog]

I enjoy the In Death series a lot. It’s very fun to read but for the love of God I will pay a million kisses to whoever can get J.D Robb (Nora Roberts) to stop writing Eve interact with characters who are victims of rape and sexual assault/abuse. A lot of times those characters end up killing their abusers or are “in the way” of Eve identifying the killer. For example I recently read Brotherhood in Death and Vengeance in Death, also kinda Purity in Death.

All it does is shows the hypocrisy of Eve’s morals. She seems to have a very hard time understanding that some people’s form of Justice is having their abuser dead by their hand. That is good enough for them. It’s not that she has to agree with it or support it, she can’t cause she’s a cop. But she seems to have a hard time understanding it at all.

All we get is everyone around Eve being like “no Eve you killing your abuser is different! Those other guys who killed their abusers are in the wrong, you’re not.” Even though in the grand scheme of things one can argue her killing is exactly the same.

Also she comes across as rude, unsympathetic, and sometimes heartless. Not because she’s “standing for the victims” and often times because of her job it makes her hunt down victims and stand for the people who victimized them in the first place. However, what makes her worse in my opinion, is the fact that she doesn’t really offer any kindness or sympathy. Just “why didn’t you go to the police” or “it’s your fault you didn’t go to the police” which is ironic because 1) them killing their abusers is sometimes the only reason their crimes get brought to light and investigated and 2) with her (spoiler?) background with Homeland Security she should know that not all organizations deemed to protect and serve are trustworthy. What can be said to a victim of their abuser is powerful enough to just call up the chief of police when they get accused?

My other thing is that Roberts writes Eve as a character who comes off as so deep into the patriarchal bargain (in simple terms a ‘not like other girls girl’) that she is very misogynistic when dealing with women who step out of her schematic of what a woman should be. (This also extends to her friends). Which makes sense in terms of her job, her position but makes her unlikable when it comes to cases where women and their pain are the forefront. I suppose that’s what Peabody is for.

Eve is not my favorite character of the series, she is a good character in some regards. When I read cases like what I hope I outlined above it’s like really hard for me to brush past her (what I deem) character flaws.

This Goodreads review of Brotherhood in Death by reader “E” pretty much sums up my thoughts more eloquently.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1545230948

[aceinthetrap]

Roarke from JD Robb's In Death series. Though I would really hate the books to be adapted to a tv series (with current western writing standards [aka woke shit]), I've always pictured pre-Wolverine Hugh Jackman as Roarke and Castle's Stana Katic or Underworld's Kate Beckinsale as Eve Dallas.

in a perfect world what character would you own a life size cardboard cutout of. you get one and I want you to answer in the tags with your heart. if you asked me right now I would say columbo

[koolcrossstitch]

What I'm listening to:

[thatonelesbiansoilscientist]

Ceremony in Death by J.D. Robb Review

I just finished listening to book 5 in the In Death Series by J.D. Robb, a futuristic speculative murder mystery series, where the murders of the week are a police officer, his Wiccan granddaughter, and several others.

Trigger warning!!! Sexual Assualt, Child Sexual Assualt, Murder, Human Sacrifice, graphic depictions of gore and violence, disembowelment, mutilation, drugging, and drug abuse

**Spoilers Ahead**

The book opens with a funeral for a senior officer, Frank, in the futuristic NYPD, with the story set in an alternate history of the US and in the year 2058, who has seemingly died under mysterious circumstances. The lead character, Eve Dallas, a homicide detective, is asked by her Captain to quietly investigate the death as there had been suspicious reports surrounding him just before his death. At the funeral, Eve meets Frank's granddaughter Alice, who asks her to meet her at a Wiccian club.

To summarize, Alice had been dipping her toes into Wicca and then, out of academic curiosity, Satanism. Her introduction to Satanism is horrifically described as she is drugged, assaulted, and kept by the main two leaders of the Satanic cult. She runs away after seeing the cult perform a human sacrifice with a child to a Wiccian named Isis. Alice has been tormented by the cult and eventually tells her grandfather, who begins to investigate them. Frank is murdered by the cult, and Alice believes she is at fault.

Eve is a non-believer of the highest degree and begins her investigation by looking into what Frank was investigating and meeting with Alice. After meeting with her at the Wiccan club, Alice panics and goes back to her apartment; Eve has her tailed to ensure she gets home safely and then dies after running into traffic when attempting to run away from some kind of unseen force. As the story progresses, Eve meets Isis and her partner Chaz, who is the son of a renowned satanic cult murderer.

Another major theme in this book is "The Sins of the Father," where, at one point, Chaz is pinned with the murders bc of a combination of physical evidence and being reported as the coordinator for all of the murderers. Eve and her husband, Roarke (who is his own full story and baggage), both have incredibly dark histories, particularly with their fathers. Eve struggles a lot with being both objective and wanting Chaz to be innocent as evidence piles up against him.

In the end, the leaders of the Satanic cult were responsible for all the murders and actively pinned everything on Chaz because of his past. This all comes out after they drug and kidnap Eve, with plans to assault, torture, and murder her. Both of the cult leaders end up dead by the end of the book.

My thoughts:

The main themes of this book are the occult, specifically Wicca and Satanism. This book was written in the mid 90's, and at times, it really shows. In this book, specifically, Wicca and Satanism are shown to be direct opposites of each other, with Wiccan being White and Light Magic and Satanism being Black and Dark Magic. Though I am not the most familiar with either of these practices, the way they are described in the story felt reductive and, at times, almost comical to me. Though it is mentioned that the Satanic cult featured in the story is an outlier, with others being referenced as having nonviolent traditions and a code of conduct, it felt very pushed that there were only two sides of the coin in the occult. The Satanists are all hedonists and evil and wear black and leather and have a lot of piercings and crazy dyed hair, and all the Wiccans wear loose, flowy white robes, drink tea, and dance naked under the moon.

Eve frustrated me a lot in this book; at times, her thoughts were impossible to follow, even though we are in her POV for 90% of the book. She is very obviously upset with all the secrecy and creeping around she has to do for the first half of the book. However, in the latter half, she does not nearly do as much in-depth thinking about the evidence as has become normal for her in the first four books. Why are we taking a statement from a drugged out-of-her-mind woman who just happily disemboweled a man as credible Eve??

While the pacing of these books is normally very fast, there were some parts that felt underdeveloped and outright rushed. There were conclusions being jumped to that I couldn't follow where they'd come from. The ending kinda drops off directly after the big rescue and feels a bit unsatisfying to me.

I did appreciate the new characters this story brought, and I hope to see some of them again.

Rating:

6.5/10, not bad but could have been better

[105nt]

I finished Shadows in Death by JD Robb. It was efficient but I found it a bit lacking in soul. The protagonists have the best tech, the best team, the best relationship, the best sex, more money than you can shake a stick at .... but where's the grit? Perhaps there was some grit in earlier novels in the series, but this is post-grit and I was a little bored, even the serial killer seemed overwhelmed by it all.

[breath-of-fresh-eyre]

Book: Rapture In Death

Author: JD Robb

Started: Feb 3 2025

Reread: Yes

Notes: Rereading the In Death books is hilarious because you can watch Robb subtly retcon shit as she goes. Sometimes it's personality things, like Eve thinking "yeah sure I'd go to a place like this" in a ritzy spa instead of "stay tf away from me with your gloop and your grabby-hands," sometimes it's subtle shit like saying normal procedure always has three investigators on a scene ---and then immediately forgetting that for every single murder in the rest of the series.

My favorite is the tech, where she started this a few decades ago and you can SEE the FutureTech go from desktops / landlines to cell phones to smart watches

[strongbookthoughts]

Notes on Passions in Death by J. D. Robb

Book #59 in the series. I've been reading these for over 20 years, and this one still managed to surprise me in a few ways. Some of what I'm going to say might be viewed as spoilers, but I'm pretty sure it's all in the first half of the book. Anywho, here we go.

So one of the reasons that I love this series is that the type of mystery switches up pretty often. Some of them have been really high-stakes, high-profile things with serial killers, some are man hunts where the killer is known early on, some are practically cozy. This one is more of a cozy sort of murder, where the suspect pool is all present early on, but Dallas has to figure out who the liar is. Probably my favorite type, if I'm being honest.

On the other hand, some of the usual tropes got turned on their heads. There was little-to-no digital work to be done to find this killer. That means Roarke did far less of his really-not-legal information gathering to help.

Dallas had dreams about the case that were 100% not helpful in providing insights to who the killer was. That was very satisfying, because sometimes those almost feel like magic cop powers. This time? Her brain was just being dumb and messing with her.

Good appearances from some minor characters we haven't seen in a long while. I liked the assortment we got this time, and honestly, at this point, there have been so many minor characters throughout the series that it's amazing Dallas doesn't run into more people she knows more often.

And here's the thing that really stood out to me. At 59 books in, we finally got a minor character who was openly trans. I'm nearly positive this was the first in the series, and I honestly liked how she was handled. Donna appears early on in the pool of suspects/friends of the victim. While Dallas does note that Donna looks tall/strong enough to be the killer, Donna is the one who gets to say she's trans. Beyond that, she's just one of the girls. Yeah, there are a few characters who are a little catty about it, but the narrative makes it clear those people are Very Rude People for doing so.

So while I'm certainly a little bummed that it took 59 books to get a trans character on the page, I'm honestly very pleasantly surprised at how gracefully the character was written.

Also, no slips with dollars vs credits in this one. I find myself wondering if the series has had different editors recently. The style bible for this series must be a beast.

Anywho, the next one comes out in a few weeks, but I have a pile of xmas gifts to read through. And I get this series from the library, so I've usually got to wait anyway.

[leihaddock]

I've been reading A LOT of J.D. ROBB (Nora Roberts)' In Death series lately. Started in I think 2017? And then it kinda escalated when I found a second hand store a year ago And I don't think I'll ever quite be over a few of the tropes that keep repeating in the books. Other than dealing with the trauma Eve and Roarke went through in their childhood and of course Eve as a cop busting bad guys The one that gets me every single time is "for you I will become the best version of myself" type situations. Roarke shedding the shady for Eve is the prime example. But he's not the only one. There are a lot of stories where that doesn't happen and the results of that being grave One of the books I loved recently was Faithless In Death. Because it's such a clear fuck you to bigots. It's not only palpable from all the good guys in the book, it's so strong you can tell Nora Roberts was really angry at bigots at the time of writing it

[sandythereadingcafe]

REVIEW:

PASSIONS IN DEATH (In Death #59 ) by JD Robb at The Reading Cafe:

' a compelling, captivating, horrifying thriller from start to finish'

[thesirensims]

Crossover Event I'm working on! I'll be Creating Some of the Characters in the Sims 3 on this Channel and talking about The In Death Series over on my Commentary Channel! Let Me Know What You Think?

[atopvisenyashill]

i thought about theonsa AND theon/bran but the throbb pictures worked the best lmao. also-

[redinkofshame]

Modern AU where Varric's spy network and fingers-in-every-pie is just that he's a really good hacker and very nosy. He still pretends he doesn't know how to save a .PDF

[lovevalley45]

i always love the idea of getting a literary reference tattoo’d on me n i can never decide on what to get but i was reading an “in death” book n realized,,, i could get medical examiner morris’ grim reaper tattoo

however i do not think i can pull off a nipple tat so ill put in the lore inaccurate position on my thigh ig

[stonedscully]

I just want a book as smutty as a Lucy Score novel with a more of a crime element. Is that so much to ask for 🙄!? I read the first Tracers book by Laura Griffin and the mystery was good but the slow burn was way too slow and the sex was only a page and a half, and I just need more payoff than that. Any recommendations would be super appreciated ♡♡

[breath-of-fresh-eyre]

Nora Roberts does excellent sex scenes, right? God knows she's done enough of them. I tend to skip or skim the myriad ones in her "In Death" series, but sometimes I catch a bit that just, like... doesn't go. Just like a weird bit of grammar can pull you out of your reading flow, I caught this bit in my skim and my visualizations did a record scratch

The problem is in the pluralization of "hands". They've been rolling around just previous to this, and there's a pretty clear indication of missionary position. So my brain's doing this "hang on I want to figure this out" refusal to move on and flipping through the possibilities of how he's not doing some bujangasana hoverboard shit

Like if he shifted to one hand and lifted her hips with the other, makes sense. Otherwise "he shifted" is gonna have to cover him, like, strugglebussing around to get his knees under him -though he'd have to be lifting her hips REALLY high to still get the "long hard strokes." Or scootching them both down until he can stand at the edge of the bed, if it's high enough to accommodate his long legs (which hasn't been much mentioned before)

It's really not important but it's definitely one of those "I think the author lost track for a bit" moments