Barb's Book Reviews: Review of "Payback in Death: An Eve Dallas Thriller" by J.D. Robb

Monday, April 29, 2024

Review of "Payback in Death: An Eve Dallas Thriller" by J.D. Robb

In this 57th book in the 'Detective Eve Dallas' series, Eve is on the trail of a cop killer.

It's 2061 and people communicate via links, watch movies and programs on their screens, and commit crimes.....just like current times. Lt. Eve Dallas is a capable New York detective married to Irish billionaire Roarke - a handsome devil with wild blue eyes.

Dallas and Roarke have just returned from visiting Roarke's family in Ireland when a Eve is called to the scene of a suspicious death. Former Police Captain Martin Greenleaf, who once headed the Internal Affairs Bureau (IAB), is dead in his home office.

Greenleaf has a taser burn on his neck, and the weapon is on the floor beside him. Greenleaf's death is staged to look like a suicide, but Dallas quickly observes discrepancies in the scene and determines it's murder.

During Greenleaf's decades with the IAB he rooted out many 'bad cops', and the consequences for the disgraced officers ranged from dismissal, to prison, to suicide. Thus many ex-cops, and often their families, have a grudge against Greenleaf.

All these angry people make up a big suspect pool, and Eve and her police partner, bubbly Delia Peabody, question one possible perpetrator after another.

Roark helps with the investigation as well, using his network of computer experts to unearth suspects' backgrounds, financial records, activities, and so on.

Meanwhile, a detective called Joe Lansing (unfairly) accuses Dallas of trying to muddy Captain Greenleaf's name. Lansing can't seem to control his fury, and his assaults go from verbal insults to physical confrontations with Eve.

In between collecting evidence and interviewing witnesses, Dallas and Peabody go on with their personal lives: Peabody is remodeling her house in an art deco style she calls "abso-mag", and she shows off the work in progress to Dallas and Roark;

and Dallas and Roark dine on meals like meatballs and spaghetti or pizza, and enjoy each other's company. Roark also soothes and treats Dallas's wounds after she has a confrontation with the angry cop Lansing. (Considering Roark is a billionaire, the couple has a pretty low-key lifestyle).

Unlike some Eve Dallas books where the detective does more CSI type work, this novel is a police procedural in which Dallas and Peabody mostly go around speaking to people. For me, these interviews were too repetitive but the book would probably appeal to fans of the series.

Rating: 3 stars

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This is the 5th book in Mick Herron's 'Slough House' (Slow Horses) series, about British MI5 agents who've made a bad mistake and are relegated to working in a dilapidated building called Slough House. The agents at Slough House, called 'slow horses', are given nothing but monotonous paperwork to do, and are itching to get back in the game. The novels in this series are best read in order because of the continuing story arc. ***** The man in charge of Slough House is former spy master Jackson Lamb, an offensive slob who hurls insults at people, smokes too much, eats too much, and needs to shower and use deodorant. Regardless, Lamb feels compelled to look out for his 'joes' (agents), even if he thinks they're morons. Lamb outdoes himself in this book, with his insults and put-downs, and Lamb seems even more unhygienic than ever, with his long dirty toenails sticking out of his holey socks, and his habit of sticking his hands down his pants to scratch. 'London Rules' means covering your butt, and MI5 has reason to do it again in this book. The trouble starts with Roddy Ho, a talented computer hacker with no people skills who's deluded himself into thinking he's irresistible to women. In the previous book, Spook Street, a pretty girl named Kim Park lured Roddy into a relationship in order to milk him for money. Roddy thought Kim was TOTALLY into him, though Kim ALWAYS had a reason for not spending the night. Now Kim has finagled Roddy into REAL trouble. The horror starts with a terrorist attack on the English village of Abbotsfield, which leaves 12 people dead. This is followed by an explosive thrown into a penguin exhibit called The Watering Hole, and a bomb in a London train. In the midst of these events, there are two attempts on Roddy's life. First, a car tries to run Roddy down, but he's listening to music and doesn't notice. Luckily, slow horse Shirley Dander observes the incident, and knocks Roddy out of the way. In his inimitable narcissitic fashion, Roddy interprets this as Shirley making a move on him.🙂......

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At some time in the not too distant future, the Earth is in dire straights. Global warming, massive fires, earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts, floods, people living in refugee camps, dissension among rival countries, etc. It seems humanity might need an alternative home, so plans are made to launch a starship called Phoenix to a distant world called Planet X. To choose the passengers for Phoenix, 800 twelve-year-old girls, from various countries, start school at an elite institute called EvenStar. The students are culled little by little, and after eight years, 80 young women are picked to go to Planet X. The females, all of whom are twentyish at launch time, will give birth (by artificial insemination) along the way, so Planet X will have an appropriate initial colony. We join the voyage ten years after launch, when the starship is well on its way. One of Phoenix's passengers, named Anuka, is a half-Japanese woman who was raised in America. Anuka was the last person chosen for the voyage, and - while most other crew members have a specific job (nurse, botanist, engineer, etc.) - Anuka is an 'alternate' who fills in wherever she's needed. To make the trip more bearable, each traveler has a chip in their head to facilitate Digitally Augmented Reality (DAR). (This is more or less like the holodeck on Star Trek.) Each passenger can 'see' whatever environment they like, and Anuka prefers trees, forest paths, birds, and so on. As the story opens, Anuka and another crew member go on a spacewalk to check out an anomaly on the ship's hull. During the spacewalk, a horrific explosion kills three passengers, damages the Phoenix, and throws it off course. Anuka survives, but has survivor's guilt. So when it becomes clear the blast was cause by sabotage, Anuka feels compelled to identify the saboteur. As the story continues, we observe the various rivalries, friendships, disagreements, romances, pregnancies, etc. among the passengers as they attempt to root out the bomber and get the Phoenix back on course. There are also flashbacks to Anuka's childhood, and we observe Anuka's relationship with her parents, the tragic death of her little brother Luis, her years at the EvenStar school, and her selection for the Phoenix voyage. It turns out Anuka and her mom had a falling out that deeply affects Anuka during the journey........

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Barb's Book Reviews

Monday, April 29, 2024

Review of "Payback in Death: An Eve Dallas Thriller" by J.D. Robb

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