Apprentice in Death

****

4 Stars/5

Thanks to Netgalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for giving me this book to review.

It is January 2061 and New York is recovering from the Festive Season, when a mysterious sniper starts a killing spree.  Are the victims as random as they seem or is there method in the madness?  Lt Eve Dallas is the primary investigator with the NYPSD. How will she and her team be able to find a killer who can strike from miles away?

I enjoyed this book, which is the 43^rd in the series because it goes back to the tried and trusted format of knowing who the killer is from an early stage, but the challenge is in trying to find and capture them.  As usual, the Eve Dallas and Rourke books have fast paced action, interspersed with logic, and some quite spicy bits.  While it is set in the future, it is in a world which you can imagine progressing from ours, which is not too dissimilar to the present, but with some very cool gadgets.

Eve Dallas is, as usual, focussed and intense, her husband, Rourke, is too good to be true, but I always enjoy reading about her NYPSD partner, Delia Peabody. She is such a grounded character, who, whilst dedicated to her job, also has everyday gripes and worries, such as the size of her butt, or whether she can afford those shoes! 

As usual, I enjoyed Apprentice in Death as J D Robb’s recent “in Death” books have been quite political or with lots of twists and turns, and this was a welcome return to the more “outthinking the bad guy” type cop book.  I would recommend Apprentice in Death to any readers of other J D Robb novels, people who enjoy reading Nora Roberts (same author, different pen-name), or people who enjoy good crime novels.