Publishers Weekly
07/29/2024
Spunky New York City homicide detective Eve Dallas investigates a bachelorette party gone south in the anemic latest near-future thriller from Robb (after Random in Death). In 2061, New York’s Down and Dirty sex club is packed with partiers celebrating the upcoming wedding of marketing executive Shauna Hunicutt and street artist Erin Albright. The festivities come to a halt when the one of the brides-to-be is found strangled to death in the club’s private room. The brutality of the crime suggests a personal vendetta, so when Dallas and her colleagues, detectives Delia Peabody and Ian McNab, arrive at the scene, they waste no time interviewing the party guests, many of whom have known each other since high school. The case stirs up uneasy memories for Dallas, who was once assaulted in the same private room, and she fights to suppress her emotions as she parses Shauna and Erin’s circle of friends. While Dallas’s home life with her wealthy husband continues to offer a welcome dose of romantic fantasy, the circuitous investigation is likely to test the patience of even Robb’s most devoted fans. This series has seen better days. Agent: Amy Berkower, Writers House. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
"Puts the “procedure” rewardingly back into the police procedural." —Kirkus
"With the fifty-eighth irresistibly readable entry in the ever-popular Eve Dallas series, Robb (Payback in Death, 2023) continues to showcase her mastery when it comes to creating inventive plots generously spiked with nail-biting suspense and populated with compelling characters, including Eve, who never stops working to bring justice to the victims in every murder case she investigates." —Booklist
Kirkus Reviews
2024-07-04
Lieutenant Eve Dallas is called out of bed to investigate the late-night strangling of a bride-to-be at her and her fiancee’s joint bachelorette party.
On top of her wedding to Fancy Feet shoe store manager Shauna Hunnicut a few days away, street artist Erin Albright is looking forward to something else: a surprise honeymoon in Maui, a trip Shauna’s always dreamed of taking, that Erin’s financed by unexpectedly selling three paintings. Feverish with excitement, Erin ducks into a privacy room at the sex club Down and Dirty to don her Hawaiian apparel but never comes out. Assuming from the get-go that “somebody Albright knew and trusted killed her,” Dallas and her partner, Det. Delia Peabody, question Erin’s studio mates and the friends she shared with Shauna in search of someone who objected to her marriage enough to kill her—or a collector of her canvases looking for a quick and dirty way to drive up their prices. In an investigation that’s unusually sharply focused for this futuristic series, Dallas and Peabody initially spend most of their time spitballing theories about possible killers and checking the alibis of the leading candidates. As the grind grinds on, things get distinctly more interesting when they narrow their focus to two favored suspects: Shauna’s ex-lover Greg Barney, who’s now the cohab of the brides’ mutual friend Becca DiNuzio, and Erin’s ex-lover ChiChi Lopez, a stripper who clearly enjoys displaying her body to paying audiences. They both fit the profile that consulting psychologist Dr. Mira provides to a T. So which of them did the deed—or was it someone else entirely?
Steadily rising tension more than makes up for the absence of surprises. This is, after all, a procedural.
