Promises in Death

by: J.D. Robb

Published by: G.P. Putnam's Sons Publishers

Reviewed by Carrie Padgett

J.D. Robb delivers another winner with Promises in Death.

For years I dismissed J.D. Robb because I knew the name was a pseudonym for Nora Roberts. I don’t care for Roberts’ romances, and I’m not a fan of sci-fi futuristic fiction.

Several people whose opinions I value recommended Robb so I held my nose and plunged in. Then ate my words with a generous helping of crow.

Roberts/Robb is brilliant. Her Lieutenant Eve Dallas is wounded and real. Dallas’s husband Roarke adores her. She has a group of friends who love her, even when she doesn’t know how to respond to their care and affection.

Promises in Death begins with the murder of a fellow cop–someone Dallas knew and wasn’t sure she liked. The victim, Detective Amaryllis Coltraine, was loved by Dallas’s friend and colleague Li Morris, so Dallas takes the assignment and vows to find the killer.

The investigation leads close to home. Too close. Dallas begins examining the cops in Coltraine’s squad, and they resent it. There is also a lead to a past case, one with personal meaning for both Dallas and Roarke. As the focus narrows, Dallas has to examine her own past as well as her husband’s. She’s not sure how she feels about all the similarities between her, her husband, and their quarry.

Because Robb’s setting is the near future, her reader can relate to the technology and urban ethos of New York City. But as Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple was wont to proclaim, human nature is much the same everywhere–in the rural shire and in the city, in the here and now and in the future.

Even though Eve Dallas’s car can go vertical, she is still in peril if it’s hit broadside. Even though technology can pinpoint time of death, the victim is still dead.

Even though Nora Roberts writes romance, J.D. Robb writes a rocking murder mystery.

Armchair Interviews agrees.

Author’s Web site: http://www.NoraRoberts.com