One of the best of the In Death series in a long time. Definitely a keeper for me, and an A+.

I know the best part of these books (and what most people keep reading them for) is always the interaction between the characters, but I really enjoyed the suspense sub-plot this time, and felt it added a lot to our knowledge of the characters. It was interesting to see how Eve and Roarke had such different reactions to what the Purity Seekers were doing, and these reactions were very true to the characters. However... maybe having innocent people killed as bystanders by the actions of this group was a little cop-out on Nora's part. As it was, of course we'd condemn Purity. But what if their plan had worked correctly? Would she have been able to write as effectively a story where all the victims really deserved to be dead? Where the problem with Purity was only that they were vigilantes and operating outside the law, not that they were also endangering innocent bystanders? Mind you, I still enjoyed the way it was written, but sometimes it's fun to play "what if"s.

I always say you can usually more or less infer quite a few things about the author based on their books. This one really made clear the fact that Nora is probably quite liberal. Many of the Purity Seekers were "staunch conservatives" (especially Dukes, a really loathsome character), and at the end, she has Mayor Peachtree stay in his post (at least that's what I interpreted) even though he's a transvestite. I quite like this, but I know I would hate it if her ideology were different to mine.

Other miscellaneous stuff: I liked the pregnant Mavis part, a good way of giving something to the fans who keep screaming for Eve and Roarke to have a kid, without giving said fans exactly what they want, which would be a disaster for the series. I was surprised (happily) to see the final round-up of the suspects go exactly as planned, with no snafus, and the way Eve screwed the villain in the end was priceless.