Eve Dallas is one tough cop. She?s got no problem dealing with a holiday reveller in a red suit who plunges thirty-seven stories and gives new meaning to the term "sidewalk Santa. " But when she gets back to the station and Trudy Lombard shows up, it?s all Eve can do to hold it together. Instantly, she?s plunged back into the past, to the days when she was a vulnerable, traumatized girl - trapped in foster care with the twisted woman who now sits in front of her, smiling. Trudy claims she just wanted to see how Eve was doing. But Eve?s husband, Roarke, suspects otherwise - and his suspicions prove correct when Trudy arrives at his office demanding money in exchange for keeping the ugly details of his wife?s childhood a secret. Barely restraining himself, Roarke shows her the door - and makes it clear that she?d be wise to get out of New York and never bother him or his wife again. But just a few days later, Trudy?s found on the floor of her hotel room, a mess of bruises and blood. A cop to the core, Eve is determined to solve the case, if only for the sake of Trudy?s bereaved son. Unfortunately, Eve is not the only one to have suffered at this woman?s hands, and she and Roarke will follow a circuitous, dangerous path to find out who turned this victimizer into a victim.

6 Hours, 5 CD's Abridged

Nora Roberts is the number-one New York Times best-selling author of more than one hundred fifty novels. Under the pen name J. D. Robb, she is author of the number-one New York Times best-selling futuristic suspense series featuring Lieutenant Eve Dallas and Roarke. There are more than 280 million copies of her books in print, and she has had more than one hundred New York Times best-sellers.

2008-01-30 Free Marnie Now!

I quite enjoyed this. One reason being that for a change Roarke is allowed to show his nasty side...to Trudy...who turns into the victim of murder a few pages later. The more boring In Death books are all those where Roarke is turned into some kind of opinionless crutch for his wife. Which is most of them nowadays. Also. Eve shows her selfish side and then has to apologise to her husband. I enjoyed that too.

Towards the end of the book, the perp, Marnie calls Eve a hypocrite. I agree with her. Eve says that she would have prefered that sadistic foster mom, Trudy, should have been tried for her child abuse crimes and then put in a cage for many many years. But who would have the guts to see that justice was done? Not Eve. She had shut Trudy out of her mind and turned into a pathetic quivering coward the first time she saw her in her adult life. Yet Marnie, another abused foster kid had the balls to hand out vengeance and then had to suffer Eve at her sermonising, insufferably moralising worst. The case of Trudy's death should have been left unsolved and quietly closed.

In any case. This is a prime example of a crime some police forces categorise as 'no humans involved.' That is, one felon committing a crime upon another felon. Why a fairly decent human being such as Eve feels any personal attachment to Trudy is beyond my understanding.

Despite all that. Like I said I enjoyed this novel. Mainly because there are lots of scenes between Roarke and Eve. One relationship that continues to ring false however, is the one between Eve and Summerset. There really is no need for Eve to be so constantly abusive to Sommerset, who is essentially a well-loved servant. Sometimes it seems that she's bullying him. Seeing how she's married to his employer. By now all the readers realise that if it came to a choice between Summerset and Eve, Roarke would choose his wife every time.