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Desperation in Death (In Death, #55)

J.D. Robb

Start date: September 6, 2022

Finish date: October 31, 2022

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What Members Thought

Sep 14, 2022 Anne OK rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2022-reads

Even amid the horrors of the insidious crimes that Eve, Roarke and the crew investigate, JDRobb can still make me smile and laugh -- and even ooh and aah with her clever musings and back-and-forth bantering between such an amazing cast of characters. Number 55 proves to be one of her best yet – even when dealing with such a dark and tragic storyline.

So good to catch-up with so many of the beloved cast of friends gathered throughout this installment in the In Death series. Sebastian, who first ca ...more

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Nov 27, 2022 TinaNoir rated it liked it

Shelves: romance, mystery-police-procedural-pi, z2022-reads

Solid installment with the very disturbing subject of child sex trafficking at its center.

Two young girls escape from a sort of training academy where young girls are abducted into and trained to become ... whatever they need to be... and sold in auction.

Eve catches the case when one of those girls Mia is found dead and the other girl, Dorian is implicated in the murder. But Dorian has disappeared.

But Eve smarter than her would be antagonists and through various clues and deductions figures out Solid installment with the very disturbing subject of child sex trafficking at its center.

Two young girls escape from a sort of training academy where young girls are abducted into and trained to become ... whatever they need to be... and sold in auction.

Eve catches the case when one of those girls Mia is found dead and the other girl, Dorian is implicated in the murder. But Dorian has disappeared.

But Eve smarter than her would be antagonists and through various clues and deductions figures out what is going on. She just really would like to get her hands on Dorian before the people who murdered Mia and tried to frame Dorian find her.

Like I said solid installment. Eve does what Eve does and methodically gets to the business of figuring out the sex trafficking ring and busting it in order to find her murderer. Her usual crew doing their usual thing are all in tow.

I don't give this a higher than a three because while the story it self was ok there are so many things that feel like check boxes that need to get ticked off in each book. We get a Mira profile, an op run by Eve, Eve wondering about why an idiomatic phrase is the way it is, a visit to Dickie and Harvo where Eve makes threats and he complains that hers isn't the only case etc. etc.

And while there has always been a fair amount of Copaganda in these books, I just roll with because they are fiction/fantasy after all, but this one had a scene that really rubbed me wrong. Dorian is a street kid who the system has let down over and over who does not trust the police. She is a 12 year old girl who has been abused, abducted and traumatized and rather than understand that her defiance toward a cop she met a nanosecond ago and her acting out is rooted in some real issues, Eve and Mavis decide to rather self righteously gang up on her to guilt her into feeling grateful that a cop is doing their actual job. The whole scene left a bad taste in my mouth, tbh. Sure we the readers knows Eve's and Mavis' past but they are the adults in the room and they should have known what the girl was going through and rather than embarrass and harangue her in front of a whole room of strangers, they could have approached it differently. Again she was 12 and a victim. The optics felt wrong for these two rich grown ass white women to putting a little traumatized brown girl in her place because she dared to be rude to a cop. So yeah, that made me feel some type of way.

But a pro is that we didn't get very many scenes from the bad guys perspective. Sometimes this gets overdone in this series, but I was pleasantly surprised that this one really centered on Dorian's perspective as she is on the run and hiding and Eve's perspective from the investigation. We onyl get glimpses of the bad guys who are oblivious of their impending doom.

Anyway, not bad but it won't stand out as one of my favorites.
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Nov 27, 2022 Wendy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 3500-2022, wom-22, dec-22

Loved this 55th book in J.D. Robb's "In Death" series! ...more

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Sep 12, 2022 Shawna rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fave-hero-ever-marry-me-roarke, hero-attractive-handsome-heartthrob, favorite-romance-couple-hh-pairings, married-couples-married-convenience, hero-daddy-warbucks-wealthy, hero-lived-survived-on-the-streets, favorite-romance-series, 2022-reads, 4-to-5-stars, crime-mystery-thriller-suspense-fic

4.5 stars - Crime/Mystery/Futuristic/Police Procedural

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Sep 17, 2022 Sheery rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, part-of-a-series, detective, set-in-nyc, read-in-2022, 2022-nora-jdr

I really liked this book. The subject matter is hard and I admit to having to skim a couple of scenes because I just couldn't handle it. This story has kidnappings, sex trafficking, pornography and obviously murder - but of a child. I KNOW this series is about homicides but it's harder for me to read when the character is a kid.

This installment of the series is great character-wise, though! I have admitted before that I love this series because of the character development. As anyone who has rea ...more

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Jan 05, 2023 Sammie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: suspense-romance

I've been waiting for a human trafficking case to come up on Eve's roster! It's everything I expected and more. The nature of the case lead this volume to a more somber direction. As many of the captives had experiences parallel to Eve and Roarke's past, you can imagine the angst our main duo experiences here. Eve and Roarke's relationship really evolves in this one. You can see them move past the newlywed adjustment period to a solid, seasoned unit. It makes me happy for them but also brings up ...more

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