Innocent in Death

Call me ignorant, if you like, but I had never heard of Nora Roberts nor indeed of her alter ego JD Robb. Clearly I am in a minority here as I see she has published "over 150 New York Times bestselling novels". Anyway, I happened upon this recently in a garden centre of all places -- well, I say that, but in fact garden centres in the UK are now full of all kinds of things which have nothing to do with gardening. This one, not my usual stamping ground, had a large book department, in which all the paperbacks were selling for 3 for a fiver (that's £5 to you foreign lot). Cheaper, in fact, than many charity shops these days. The trouble was that there were few books I actually wanted to read. Nothing daunted, I decided it was too good an offer to miss, so I trawled around trying to decide what might conceivably interest me. As I am such a sucker for crime, it was on the cards that I'd go for something along those lines, and this once certainly is. It is a fairly recent (2007?) addition to a series of at least 24 novels, all featuring the female detective Eve Dallas and her impossibly rich, gorgeous, brilliant husband Roarke. What I had not noticed until I started reading it was that this series' USP is that the novels are set in New York City in 2060. If I had noticed this it might have put me off, as science fiction is not my cup of tea. In fact it is so lightly done here that it is hardly noticeable -- it just takes the form of slightly more sophisticated technology, really, and I have to admit it's quite clever. The plot, too, is certainly well done, and I found it quite a page turner. The novel starts with a young, newly married teacher being found dead from poison in his classroom. The expensive private school where he teaches is highly respectable on the surface, but when Eve starts to investigate she finds all kinds of sexual shenanigans have been going on on the quiet. There seems to be an obvious suspect, but when they too are found murdered Eve has to rethink her conclusions. This is all made much more difficult because an old flame of her husband's, the beautiful blonde Magdalena, has turned up and seems determined to get Roarke back. Eve's gradual realisation of the identity of the killer, and the methods she has to pursue to entrap them, are well done indeed. I was less enamoured of Eve herself -- hard boiled, unsentimental, but deeply in love with her billionaire spouse -- and found said billionaire spouse a bit too good to be true. There's lots of passionate sex between them, if you like that sort of thing. Still, it's quite a well written book -- no Baldacci or Dan Brown infelicities here -- and you never know, I might just pick up another one sometime if the price is right.