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In this latest futuristic thriller by J. D. Robb (a.k.a Nora Roberts), NYPSD Lieutenant Eve Dallas faces a killer who’s haunted her for the past nine years, ever since she was just a rookie.
One night, as Dallas is settling in for an evening at home with her husband, Roarke, she’s called in to check out a body that’s been dumped in the park. Though she’s off-duty, she understands why she’s been called in as soon as she sees the body. It’s obviously the work of a serial killer known as The Groom.
When The Groom first terrorized the women of New York in 2051, Dallas was still learning the ropes—but now she’s in charge of the investigation. Since the killer captures his victims one after another, preparing his next victim while he’s still slowly torturing another, Dallas knows that it’s up to her to find The Groom before another woman dies. She works around the clock to put the pieces together—and to dig up the clues that she and her mentor, Feeney, hadn’t found before. But it soon becomes clear that, this time, The Groom’s killing spree is personal—and he could be coming for Dallas next.
From the very first page, Creation in Death is a chilling read. The villain is sinister and calculating, carefully planning each step. And the nature of his crimes make the novel a gripping read—because with the turning of the page, you’re aware that the latest victim is that much closer to winding up dead and discarded on a clean white sheet. Still, Robb takes the time to work through the details with careful precision—just as her villain does. There’s a lot of procedural stuff here—but it doesn’t really slow down the suspense.
Since this was (I’m almost ashamed to admit) my first time reading one of Robb’s Dallas novels, I found that the futuristic setting took some getting used to. While it wasn’t all that difficult to believe that, 50 years from now, we’ll have machines that cook our food to order or computers that take verbal orders and tackle complex calculations, there were some things that seemed to be a bit hard to believe and others that seemed a little too similar to the way they are today. I guess I’m just a details person—and I found some of the little details in this novel to be a bit distracting.
Picky details aside, though, Creation in Death is a gripping and suspenseful novel. If you love a good crime thriller (or a good episode of Law & Order: SVU), you’ll enjoy racing along with Dallas and trying to put all the pieces together.
