Purity in Death by J.D. Robb Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $3.73 You Save: $4.26 (53%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Purity in Death
Book Review: Not her best one
Summary: 3 Stars
I usually love her books in the "In Death" series. This one just didn't grab me. It didn't have an interesting plot and it was not very successful. The development of McNab and Peabody's characters were interseting, though. Otherwise too many peripheral characters were thrown into this book.Book Review: Not her best work
Summary: 3 Stars
Okay, I'm disappointed in this one. I worried about the ongoing quality of the series after Roberts/Robb committed to publishing 2 books/year in this series; look at how many new Nora Roberts/J. D. Robb titles were already coming out a year. When they were released on an 8-9 month schedule it seemed possible, but this is inhuman and it shows. (Of course, the ghostwriter rumor could be true. I gave it no credence until I read the first 4 chapters of Purity..., now it sounds a little more credible.)Having said that, bad J. D. Robb is still much better than most of what gets published. I stayed up way too late to finish it. If you like the series and the characters, you'll like it, but it's not the tour-de-force that Naked in Death is.
Book Review: Not the best Eve Dallas novel, but still a decent read.
Summary: 3 Stars
A frightened phone call from Officer Trueheart has homicide Lieutenant Eve Dallas running to a crime scene with even more urgency than usual. The keen rookie to homicide has killed a man, but he's not sure exactly how. One Louie Cogburn had been beating the heck out of one of his neighbours when the call came through, and doing a fine job of it too. One dead and another on the way to being in the same state until Officer Trueheart stepped in. Was excessive force used to bring down the raging man? Eve doesn't think so. Interviewing one of the witnesses tells her that the stun delivered from the weapon of her officer wouldn't have been enough to kill, but maybe it was enough to trigger something else.
Can a computer virus be spread from unit to user? An officer working on the unit pulled from the crime scene escalates from being irritated at the job into an out of control, psychotic rage. Firing off his weapon at work Officer Halloway shoots down a fellow officer and takes hostage the captain of the electronics division, Eve's old mentor Feeney. Eve manages to talk the hostage free of that situation, but the sick and enraged Officer Halloway doesn't make it.
The usual gang all have their turn in "Purity in Death", the 15th novel in the best selling "in Death" series by author Nora Roberts, writing as J.D. Robb. There isn't too much you have to unravel mystery wise but there's enough going on in the personal avenues of the secondary characters to keep the interest up. This novel suffers again from too much Roarke, as Eve's gorgeous and glamorous husband is seconded (yet again) into the service of the New York police. Police procedures 2059 style are on show once again, with all the technological wonders of the imagined age stylishly presented. Newbies might be a bit lost on this one as Robb does not bother this far into this series with the detailed explanations, but first contact with the fast and furious Eve Dallas should prove a welcome one. Read, enjoy, and then mostly forget.
Book Review: Nothing new here...
Summary: 1 Stars
Lets face it, after 14 books this series is just predictable. Eve is the tough-as-nails cop, Roark is the fantasy-man come to life--rich, gorgeous and sensitive. But, as well as Roberts writes, its been done ad nauseum. This was a great premise-- just done to death.Book Review: Once You Swallow the Bolonium, It's Pretty Good
Summary: 3 Stars
On a panel at a science fiction convention, i once heard an author explain that you are permitted to introduce one piece of the miracle element "Bolonium" (which can do or be anything the author wants) into your story, but after that you can't do anything else contrary to fact in your storytelling.Robb gets away with two chunks, but, since one is the underlying pseudo-science-fiction setting in the year 2059 introduced at the very beginning of the series, i'll give her a bye on that one.
My wife and i are both involved professionally with computers, and she told me that she was afraid i wasn't going to like this book because it involved a computer virus that could attack human brains. I explained the Bolonium Hypothesis to her; and, as i expected (based on previous Dallas/Roarke mysteries), while i didn't believe for a moment that such a thing could happen, if i accepted that it could, i was in for a pretty good romance/police procedural novel as Dallas and company mobilised to catch the Bad Guys.
Said Bad Guys are a group of vigilante-types who are out to bring their own brand of "justice" to child-predators who cannot be touched by the law; as is often the case in plots of this type, the initial public reaction to their actions and manifestos is guardedly favourable -- after all, they're only attacking nasty child-molestors.
But Dallas and her people are aware that people who deal extra-legal "justice" to one class of offendor are likely to expand their attentiosn to others. And not everyone agrees as to just who ought to die for his "crimes". A child-molestor? Quite possibly. A dealer in nasty drugs? Maybe. A jay-walker. perhaps?
As usual, Robb delivers the goods, specially in the secondary characters with which this series is so rich. Peabody and McNabb have particularly strong (and uncharacteristic, but completely in-character) roles to play, and Mavis has a Startling Announcement.
While you can start the series with this volume (or any other), i really think you'll have more fun if you start with the first and read them in order.