Innocent in Death, by JD Robb

TITLE: Innocent in Death
AUTHOR: JD Robb

COPYRIGHT:2007
PAGES: 385
PUBLISHER: Piatkus (published by Berkley in the US)

SETTING: New York City in the year 2060
TYPE: Romantic suspense
SERIES: Latest in the In Death series (# 25, by my count)

REASON FOR READING: This is by far the best romance series ever, and I love every entry of it.

The phenomenal series set in a future New York City returns as NYPSD Lt. Eve Dallas hunts for the killer of a seemingly ordinary history teacher—and uncovers some extraordinary surprises. Craig Foster's death devastated his young wife, who'd sent him to work that day with a lovingly packed lunch. It shocked his colleagues at the private school, too, and as for the ten-year-old girls who found him in his classroom in a pool of bodily fluids—they may have been traumatized for life.

Eve soon determines that Foster's homemade lunch was tainted with deadly ricin, and that Mr. Foster's colleagues have some startling secrets of their own. It's Eve's job to sort it out—and discover why someone would have done this to a man who seemed so inoffensive, so pleasant . . . so innocent.

Now Magdalena Percell . . . there's someone Eve can picture as a murder victim. Possibly at Eve's own hands. The slinky blonde—an old flame of her billionaire husband, Roarke—has arrived in New York, and she's anything but innocent. Roarke seems blind to Magdalena's manipulation, and he insists that the occasional lunch or business meeting with her is nothing to worry about... and none of Eve's business. Eve's so unnerved by the situation that she finds it hard to focus on her case. Still, she'll have to put aside her feelings, for a while at least—because another man has just turned up dead.

Eve knows all too well that innocence can be a facade. Keeping that in mind may help her solve this case at last. But it may also tear apart her marriage.

THE PLOT: Eve is investigating the death of private school teacher Craig Foster, who was found poisoned at his desk. She's getting nowhere fast, finding no real reason why anyone should want to kill a nice, harmless man like Craig. Even when she finds some suspicious secrets in the school, things don't add up in her head.

It doesn't help that her relationship with Roarke suddenly feels under threat. Having hordes of women hitting on her husband has never fazed Eve in the past, but Magdelana Purcell isn't just any other woman: she's the only woman who actually dumped Roarke, rather than been dumped by him. She's obviously hellbent on creating trouble, and Roarke seems blind to it.

MY THOUGHTS: As always with these books, there's the case and there's the relationship stuff. They're well integrated, and everything, but still something I might evaluate separately. In this case, both were great.

I found myself genuinely interested in finding out why exactly someone might want to see Craig dead. The mystery is slowly and carefully developed, and the culprit doesn't come out of the blue at all. When you discover what happened, you look back and wonder why you didn't see it. Maybe for the same reason Eve wasn't seeing it, I guess, though I did consider it at one point and then thought "nah, she wouldn't". Anyway, fascinating and incredibly creepy.

But the Magdelana thing, oh, wow! In the first place, I loved the glimpse at the young Roarke, and I also loved the angst this whole thing created. It was great, great angst, too, because Nora managed to build it into something truly significant and important, something Eve was perfectly right to be upset about, but all without any real possibilities that Roarke would actually do anything, be even interested in doing anything with Magdelana. What's more, Eve knew perfectly well this was the case, but still, it felt right that she would be destroyed by the situation.

For I while I wanted to smack the boneheaded idiot for not realizing exactly what the incredibly obvious bitch was doing, but this lasted the exact right amount of time... long enough to get the full effect, not long enough to make it frustrating. It was all well solved, too, very satisfyingly, though was there really a need for her to hit him, too? ;-)

Oh, and another great thing was seeing the great support network of girlfriends Eve has created come into action. She's really come along way since book 1, hasn't she?

The only minus in the whole book? The name Magdelana. That drove out of my head. I suppose her parents might have spelled her name however they wanted, but something in me kept screaming "It's Magdalena, not Magdelana!!!!!" every single time.

MY GRADE: A very satisfying, solid B+.