Review: Shadows in Death (In Death #51) by J.D. Robb

Print Length: 368 pages

Publisher: St.Martin's Press (September 8, 2020)

From Goodreads.com:  Lt. Eve Dallas is about to walk into the shadows of her husband's dangerous past.

As it often did since he'd married a cop, murder interrupted more pleasant activities. Then again, Roarke supposed, the woman lying in a pool of her own blood a few steps inside the arch in Washington Square Park had a heftier complaint.

When a night out at the theatre is interrupted by the murder of a young woman in Washington Square Park, it seems like an ordinary case for Detective Eve Dallas and her team. But when Roarke spots a shadow from his past in the crowd, Eve realises that this case is far from business as usual.

Eve has two complex cases on her hands - the shocking murder of this wealthy young mother and tracking down the shadow before he can strike again, this time much closer to home. Eve is well used to being the hunter, but how will she cope when the tables are turned? As Eve and the team follow leads to Roarke's hometown in Ireland, the race is on to stop the shadow making his next move . . . 

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My Rating: 2 stars out of 5

I had some definite issues with this one. The first one being the torture and mutilation of animals. Even if (thankfully) we don't "see" the act being done, there was absolutely no reason for it to be included. It did nothing to move the plot forward. In fact - in the instance that it was used to scare Eve, there didn't even have to be a cat in the bag for the ruse to have worked. 

The second issue is the complete 180 degree Eve seemed to take. Throughout her career she has has always done whatever she needed to do in order to bring justice for her victims. Even when she had to step into the "gray" area with Roarke  (either by using his unregistered equipment or having him use his tools to get her into a building) it had always been in the name of justice. So for her to already have her suspect (one with over 400 confirmed kills under his belt) in custody and just take the restraints off so her husband could physically fight him seemed completely out of character. Coupled with that, she essentially bullied the agent from Interpol into going with the falsified report that her COMMANDER suggested? It was just too much. Too out of character. Too over the line she has always upheld and sworn not to cross. 

Those things aside, this book was a decent enough read. We knew the who and the why early on, so the rest of the book read more of a chasing their tails and occasionally moving two steps forward.

I miss the days when I had to worry about these characters. If this man was as good as they claimed he was, psychotic break or not, I would have expected him to try for Eve or Roarke. Or Mira, Peabody, Summerset, heck even Feeny. In earlier books? He would have. He may even have succeeded in kidnapping one of them. These later books have been missing that, and even to a certain degree missing the action that made these books so good. In fact, all things considered, the ending of this one seemed very anti-climatic. 

Being fifty-one books in, I would expect some things to change, but this one was more befitting the start of a series instead of the continuation of one.

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                                                              Shadows in Death is available from Amazon.com