ECHOES IN DEATH

The winter of 2061 finds New York still with no cure for blizzards, or for serial felonies.

Both the forensic evidence and the testimony of Daphne Strazza—whom Lt. Eve Dallas (Apprentice in Death, 2016, etc.) runs into, wandering the streets naked and dazed, while Eve’s on her way home from a charity ball—indicate that the attack that left Daphne’s husband, noted surgeon Anthony Strazza, dead was a home invasion following the Strazzas’ own party that went wrong when Dr. Strazza loosened the bonds that held him a helpless victim to his wife’s rape and launched himself at the invader. Looking closer, however, Eve realizes that the only way for the perp to have breached the Strazzas’ security was to arrive with the people of Jacko’s Caterers or the equipment suppliers of Loan Star Rentals. While Eve’s busy narrowing the field of suspects, her sidekick, Detective Amelia Peabody, is multiplying the victims. It seems that Rosa and Neville Patrick endured a remarkably similar home invasion six months ago, and Lori and Ira Brinkman another one in November. Now that the invader, who seems less interested in stealing valuables than in dressing in ghoulish costumes and humiliating his victims, has tasted blood, Eve is convinced he’ll turn up the heat, and so he does. Will Eve work her way through interviewing all the suspects and potential victims to confront the killer before the first robin of spring?

Robb knows her audience will be highly sympathetic to a police heroine who has to walk a crime scene in uncomfortably fashionable stiletto heels, but along the winding trail to the easily spotted villain, she's not afraid to throw in some descriptions that will earn this installment an R for serious sexual violence.