A Book Review and a few other things...

To begin with, people should sign up for the Advent Calendar! It's the holiday season, why not take a day and give a gift your fellow bloggers! We still have a few days left to cover, so join in the fun. Marg is working on a more detailed follow up post, so I will say more about that later.

It is interesting, on the subject of Christmas traditions. The most depressing tradition seems to be happening at my house. Last year one of my cats, Maggie, was put down because it was discovered that she had cancer. This was Christmas Day that we discovered something was wrong when my sister picked her up and set her back down and her legs would not support her. Two days later, she was put to sleep. (I wonder, was "put to sleep" created to make people feel better about the whole enterprise?) Anyways, here we are a year later, 21 days before Christmas, and another cat is going to the vet, and likely will not be coming home. And, I am the unlucky person that has to go to the vet with it. It's my sisters' cat, but she refuses to do it, so my mother asked me to do it. I know why, every time something happens to an animal in this house, my mother is there when they put it down. I just think my sister should do it. I would want to be there if it was my cat, who is 12 and I can see joining the ranks soon. Then there is Sandy, who is 10. I hope that they don't all leave this earth during the Christmas holidays.

Anyways, off of the depressing note and on to other subject matters. I am going to post a review! Me and Marg, from Reading Adventures, have been reading J.D. Robb's In Death series and posting about it. She read Vengeance in Death last month, but I hardly read anything. So, I caught up today. I am just going to post her old post and add my part to it. And, everyone can just pretend I am not such a slacker... Marg will be the black text, I will be the blue.

He is an expert with the latest technology . . . a madman with the mind of a genius and the heart of a killer. He quietly stalks his prey. Then he haunts the police with cryptic riddles about the crimes he is about to commit - always solved moments too late to save the victims' lives.

Police lieutenant Eve Dallas found the first victim butchered in his own home. The second lost his life in a vacant luxury apartment. The two men had little in common. Both suffered unspeakable torture before their deaths. And both had ties to an ugly secret of ten years past - a secret shared by none other than Eve's new husband, Roarke.

Eve is looking forward to going home on time after having wrapped up a relatively straight forward case, when she is contacted personally and given a riddle to solve that leads her to find the badly mutilated body of a man in his luxury apartment. When another man is killed, this time in one of Rourke's empty rental properties, it soon becomes clear that whoever is killing these people is working his way towards Eve and Roarke himself, and along the way seems determined to make it appear as though Summerset might be involved in the deaths. As much as Eve dislikes Summerset, she finds it hard to believe that he would murder people, so as she deals with the killer, she has to find ways to either prove that her husband's close friend and butler is either guilty or not, as the case may be.

Just when you thought that maybe a case would not involve Roarke, it is back there once again. I find this particular In Death book really shows a side to the characters in the book that we have not really seen up to this point. As the case is related to Roarke and Summerset's past, we see a great deal of their history up close and personal. Summerset has always been included in the novels, but more as a minor character. In this novel, you get a very good taste of what Summerset came from and who he is now and was during his past life in Dublin. It gives him a more human feel and adds him better to the cast of characters. It talks about difficult subjects, but it makes both Summerset, and even Eve, all that more human.

I really liked in that book that Eve and Roarke went back to the mean streets of Dublin to meet some of the people from Roarke's past, reiterating that he is human (every now and again he seems to be almost too good to be true...just a little bit!). I enjoyed the scenes in Dublin as well. Roarke is a major character, but we often hear more about Eve's past than Roarke's. In these scenes we get a chance to know the person behind the perfect persona all that much better.

This book also sees the introduction of a new character that was given a lot of page time, so I presume he will be back. At the end of the last book, Captain Feeney was invited to take his family to Roarke's home in Mexico. When Eve needs technical assistance, she is assigned a newcomer by the name of McNab. I think we are going to see more of him, and I will be glad to. He seems to have a little chemistry going with Eve's offsider Peabody. Peabody is a very interesting character. I am glad that she stuck around and has became a major character. She tries and seem like this perfect cop, but during her undisciplined moments she adds the needed humour to off-set Eve's unflinching attitude. The two play off each other nicely, and adding NcNab to the mix makes things even more interesting. He plays off Peabody as well. It would be good if he became a bit more interesting of a character.

What amazes me with Nora Roberts in both her books written under the JD Robb and the Nora Roberts name is that she seems to have the ability to produce a lot of books, at a remarkably consistent quality. At the moment I am averaging one JD Robb book a month, and I am definitely enjoying the ride! What amazes me about JD Robb (I don't really read her as Roberts) is how the characters seem so real. There is the action showing Eve as a cop, but there are also all the background stories and her moments off work. It is not just about catching the criminal, the characters all have unique personalities and as the story progresses, the reader learns more and more about them.

Kailana's Rating: 3.5/5
Marg's Rating: 4/5