Review - - Concealed in Death

Concealed in Death

By J.D. Robb

Publisher: G. P. Putnam’s Sons

Release Date:  February 17, 2014

Regular readers of the In Death series may be somewhat surprised to find that this latest installment opens with Roarke, Lt. Eve Dallas’s wealthy husband.  He’s in an old building he’s having rehabbed.  When the contractor encourages him to take a ceremonial first swing or two at a wall that’s coming down, Roarke obliges, but what the wall is hiding shocks them all.  Behind it lie the bodies of twelve young girls.  Figuring out why and how they came to be there and catching their killer take Eve and company on a journey through the past that reminds both Eve and Roarke of their own painful childhoods.

The previous book in this series, Thankless in Death, has become a favorite.  When that happens with any book in a series, it sets the bar high for the next one, so I was a bit nervous going into this book. Concealed in Death clears the bar, though.  The mystery is tightly constructed, and most of the regular characters appear at least briefly.

Robb also introduces a new character, forensic anthropologist Garnet DeWinter, a fashionable, renowned doctor who doesn’t always share Eve’s views on case management.   As Eve’s investigation moves to the youth shelter organization that formerly occupied Roarke’s building, we meet a clever, young girl who’s living there, Quilla.  It’ll be interesting to see whether she’s a single-shot guest or will become a recurring character.

We also learn more about everyone’s favorite ex-grifter and music vid star, Mavis Freestone.  Her revelations mesh perfectly with the earlier stories and are critical to the plot.  Through her, Eve learns about a man named Sebastian who takes in homeless girls and teaches them to steal.  He, too, has potential to be a great recurring character.

One of the things I like about the In Death books is the way the characters and their relationships evolve from book to book.  Someone reading the first one, Naked in Death and then jumping to Concealed in Death would find Eve drastically different, but the differences have arisen gradually.  There are some particularly lovely bits in Concealed in Death between Eve and Charlotte and Dennis Mira that wouldn’t have been possible in the early days of this series.

Thankless in Death resolved some old issues for both Eve and Roarke, and it isn’t yet clear how these changes will settle.  It’ll be interesting to see what new stumbling blocks Robb devises, if any, to complicate Eve’s work.

The one downside to the book is that it wasn't as edgy as some others in the series.  The murders all took place in the past, and there is not a sense of current jeopardy or urgency.  Overall, though, it was an engaging and satisfying story.

~Nancy Northcott
www.nancynorthcott.com


A former attorney who never outgrew her love of comic books, science fiction and fantasy, Nancy left the legal profession to pursue her dreams of creating her own action adventure stories.  Check out her Light Mage Wars series, contemporary romances set within a fantasy world in present-day Georgia.  Bet you can't read just one! ~PJ

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