Holiday in Death by J.D. Robb (Left over review from 2006)

This book was supposed to be my last G.I.F.T. post and my TBR challenge post, but I am a little late for both. Another joint review with Marg. I am in blue and Marg is in black.

No one likes to be alone during the holidays. For New York's most posh dating service, Personally Yours, it is the season to bring lonely hearts together. But Lt. Eve Dallas, on the trail of a ritualistic serial killer, has made a disturbing discovery: all of the victims have been traced to Personally Yours. Eve soon enters an elite world of people searching for their one true love - and one killer searching for his next victim. A world where the power of love leads men and women into the ultimate act of betrayal...

The next installment in the In Death series after Vengeance in Death finds Eve just returning to work after recovering from injuries sustained in the line of duty just in time for the holidays. The thing preying on her mind most though is what to get all of her friends for Christmas, especially Roarke in their first Christmas together. It is rather funny, everytime she runs into people she knows, she has to ask them if she should buy them a Christmas present. Christmas is a new thing for her, she has never had people to buy for before, so it is an experience reading her thoughts on the holiday gift giving.

Before she can even think about that, she has to deal with a serial killer who has decided to visit his victim dressed up as Santa Claus and who is planning to make each of his victims have some connection to the song The Twelve Days of Christmas. This means that before he is done, there will be twelve victims, one for each day of the song. The killer leaves behind his trademark on each victim, a holiday ornament pertaining to the days of Christmas.

Soon the connection between the victims becomes clear - they have all been clients of an exclusive dating agency. Now it is a case of trying to infiltrate the agency and work out who the perpetrator might be as well as who his next victim will be - even if that means putting one of their own on the line. This book has Peabody's first undercover mission, which is interesting to watch. She does not appear to do blind dates very often, because she leaves one guy out of the runnings for quite some time. Have to read the book to see exactly what happened, though, of course.

I really enjoyed the way that the author managed to infuse some humour into this book. The scenes where Eve had banned Peabody from going shopping and yet kept on finding things to buy for herself were laugh out loud funny. It certainly helped balance out what could have been a very dark book indeed. This book did have more humour than the others, and I also enjoyed reading it. Robb seems to be adding more comical characters at this point in the series, anyways, which is making for interesting reading.

For me, this was the best book in the series so far. Same here! I really enjoyed this installment. I think that Robb has gotten more confident in the series at this point. I also read the other holiday story, Midnight in Death, which carries on the interest. I think I will enjoy the series even more if all the future ones are like this one.

Marg's Rating 4.5/5
Kailana's Rating 4/5