Faithless in Death (In Death #52)

By:

J.D. Robb

Blurb:

The scene in the West Village studio appears to be classic crime-of-passion: two wine glasses by the bed, music playing, and a young sculptor named Ariel Byrd with the back of her head bashed in. But when Dallas tracks down the wealthy Upper East Side woman who called 911, the details don’t add up. Gwen Huffman is wealthy, elegant, comforted by her handsome fiancé as she sheds tears over the trauma of finding the body–but why did it take an hour to report it? And why is she lying about little things?

As Eve and her team look into Gwen, her past, and the people around her, they find that the lies are about more than murder. As with sculpture, they need to chip away at the layers of deception to find the shape within–and soon they’re getting the FBI involved in a case that involves a sinister, fanatical group and a stunning criminal conspiracy.

Review:

Alright, book number fifty-two in the In Death series, Faithless in Death. Once again, Roberts delivers a great futuristic mystery with just the right amount of personal life progression. Eve and Roarke’s relationship is going great. Peabody and Mavis are brought up. Mira is there. Everyone gets their moment, and that always makes me happy.

A little while back, some people had issues with Roberts because of the casting of Alyssa Milano in an upcoming movie adaption of her book Brazen Virtue. Milano has been pretty vocal about her politics, and people were not happy with her. Roberts made a statement confirming, for anyone who’s never actually paid attention in her books, that she’s a liberal democrat. Now here’s the thing, I know that Faithless in Death was written long before this whole thing happened, but it honestly felt like a huge sign to those people that they were not represented in Roberts’s work. Well, not portrayed in a positive light. It was awesome.

The villain in Faithless in Death was a cult that I read as a mixture of Scientology and hardcore fundamentalist Christians and Trump supporters. There were digs throughout the book, and one of my absolute favorites is at the end, where Eve off-hand mentions that the Kentucky senator O’Donnell has been arrested and will be going to jail for a long time. Talk about a book boner that put a smile on my face for hours.

I wasn’t a fan of the previous book. I felt that it went too far into the police brutality zone. I was supposed to give it a pass because the bad guy had attacked Roarke and Eve, but I couldn’t do it. However, after fifty great books, I continued with the series. Oh, man, am I glad I did. I truly loved Faithless in Death, and I’m excited for the series to continue.

5/5