naked in deathglory in deathimmortal in death

NAKED IN DEATH, GLORY IN DEATH & IMMORTAL IN DEATH

Nora Roberts writing as J.D. Robb

Piatkus pbk £5.99 Rel: Sept 2003

Reviewed by Gwen Moffat


The year is 2058 and the protagonist a New York police lieutenant. The three novels comprise a running serial with more to follow. The setting is Manhattan and the same basic cast persist throughout, only killers and victims change. In Naked someone is murdering prostitutes ("licensed companions" - sic) - and Eve Dallas, the abused child turned foul-mouth cop, meets an Irish billionaire who is to become her lover.

Glory in Death goes up-market and evolves, opening with the murder of a woman lawyer and proceeding predictably but with indecent haste to Eve and the billionaire bonking in his bath. The next murder points to this killer going for high achievers, focusing on television celebrities and Eve herself. She gets her man after the mandatory one-on-one fight, although her lover arrives in time to deliver the final blow.

In Immortal in Death the lovers are about to be married and we go shopping with Eve for a wedding dress, fetching up in an exotic, not to say erotic, fashion house where, in a few hours' time, the gorgeous materials will provide the frame for the needle-thin body of the leading model. As the murders proliferate, so do the clues, enlivened by one that is extra-terrestrial. Banned plants are being cultivated inter-galatically, producing a very superior but ultimately lethal Viagra-type which is exported to Earth where it provides the motivation for murder, extortion, you name it. Much of the investigation is electronic, which is handy for Eve. Between "romantic" set-pieces she can use her lover's equipment which, because he is so rich, is vastly superior to that of the police, who are strapped for cash. So that hasn't changed either.

The publishers dub these "novels of romantic suspense" - which is a curious way to describe vehicles for a heroine with the sensitivity of an inarticulate yob and not averse to a bit of rough handling. Women victims are ubiquitous here and what comes over is a fervid fascination with blood, and blows preferably inflicted on young female flesh. Yet all conveyed in a turgid style reminiscent of the tacky pornography produced in the Far East half a century ago. This series is aimed at people who have problems with sex, will sell like hot cakes and is probably too innocuous to do any harm.