Middling for this venerable, well-regarded series.
Just what Lt. Eve Dallas needed to make Christmas in the 2050s complete: a visit from the wicked witch who made her life hell when she was in foster care.
The holiday season kicks off with Santa opening a window on an office party and taking a header onto the pavement 36 stories below, killing a bystander in a hard landing. It was drugs, his shocked coworkers admit to Lt. Dallas of New York Police and Security Department, who promptly collars the dealer and thinks she’s ready for anything. Well, one thing she’s not ready for is Trudy Lombard, the foster mother who terrorized the eight-year-old Eve back in Texas until she ran away. Now Trudy’s made the journey to the big city, her son Bobby and his accountant/bride Zana in tow, and she wants nothing more than to coo over her former charge, now world-famous as a homicide dick (Origin in Death, 2005, etc.), and incidentally to put the squeeze on Trudy’s billionaire husband Roarke. It seems that Trudy’s been following her protegée’s career with rapacious interest and is ready to go public with her every misstep on the way to success and celebrity. Roarke tosses her out with brusque counterthreats, of course, and when Eve pays her a call the next day to repeat the brush-off in person, she finds Trudy beaten to death in her hotel room. The setup promises to land Robb’s answer to the Jetsons in hot water—but it doesn’t, because they both have ironclad alibis and nobody believes they’d hire a hit. So the case at the center of the futuristic trimmings and the connubial romance comes down to nothing more weighty than figuring out whether Trudy’s relatives got rid of her, or whether the perp was some other survivor of her unique brand of nurturing who decided enough was enough.
Middling for this venerable, well-regarded series.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2006
ISBN: 0-399-15328-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2005
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
To her usual mix of love, mystery, and passion, Roberts (Sanctuary, 1997, etc.)—author of 115 romancers in some 17 years—adds Renaissance art and a decidedly Medici-like family: the Joneses of Maine. Dr. Miranda Jones, nearly six feet with flaming red hair and a glacial reserve, is an archeometrist who specializes in the analyzing and dating of Renaissance bronze sculpture. Miranda hopes to secure a world-class reputation for herself by authenticating a 15th-century statue of the Dark Lady, one of the mistresses of Lorenzo the Magnificent, as the undiscovered work of a young Michelangelo. Miranda's mother, Dr. Elizabeth Standford-Jones, the emotionally remote director of the Standjo art lab in Florence, has summoned her daughter from the family's Victorian cliffside home in Jones Point, Maine, to test the statue. Meanwhile, Miranda's father, equally remote, is an archaeologist who spends more time at his digs than at home. In fact, no one in the Jones family has made a successful run at marriage, a failure that Miranda and her alcoholic brother Andrew call the Jones curse. As for the statue, when it's discovered to be a fake, Miranda sets out to prove that someone stole the original. In this she's helped by gorgeous art thief Ryan Boldari (half-Italian, half-Irish), who's come to Jones Point to steal yet another bronze, which also turns out to be a forgery. Ryan's plan had been to use Miranda as a pawn, but now, naturally, he finds himself falling hard for her. While the two search for bronzes, a standard-issue romance-novel psychotic is stalking them. Most readers will twig to the killer's identity: Here, as always, Roberts's sexual tension is more compelling than her suspense. Perhaps it's time to take a sabbatical from the pink sweatshop and turn her considerable wit and narrative skills to a more original piece of work.
Pub Date: March 23, 1998
ISBN: 0-399-14387-4
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1998
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
