Delusion in Death

July 23, 2012
Set in 2060, the gripping 36th Eve Dallas novel (after Celebrity in Death) from bestseller Robb (the pseudonym of Nora Roberts) opens at On the Rocks, a bar on Manhattan’s Lower West Side, where the patrons, mostly “white-collared working stiffs,” are enjoying happy hour. Suddenly, everyone in the bar inexplicably turns on each other, and a bloodbath ensues. Lt. Eve Dallas of the New York Police and Security Department investigates, even though her husband, Roarke, is the owner of On the Rocks. Eve discovers a possible link to the apocalyptic Red Horse cult, which orchestrated attacks with airborne hallucinogens during the Urban Wars of the early 21st century. While Robb serves up twists and turns in ample portions, the main attraction is still the character of Eve, who will win over readers with her ability to persevere in seeking a killer while coping with her personal demons. Agent: Amy Berkower, Writers House.

November 26, 2012
Robb’s latest installment in her popular In Death series starts with a bang and never lets up. In the not so distant future, NYPD homicide detective Eve Dallas is confronted with a horrific crime scene. On a quiet Friday night the patrons and staff at a popular watering hole suddenly and without warning began lashing out at one another in a bizarre frenzy of berserker violence. Lasting only 12 minutes, the violent outbreak leaves 80 people dead. Now it’s up to Dallas and her team to find out who is behind the carnage and how to prevent another attack. With dozens of In Death audiobooks to her credit, narrator Susan Ericksen is the voice of Eve Dallas. Ericksen knows Robb’s future world and its denizens inside and out—and that familiarity imbues her reading with confidence and clarity. The narrator’s characterizations are deftly executed, and the dialogue is presented with a natural delivery. A Putnam hardcover.

August 15, 2012
The latest quarry of Lt. Eve Dallas is the homegrown terrorist who masterminded a pair of unfathomable attacks that left 127 citizens dead. One minute On the Rocks is a bar full of whatever they call yuppies in 2060 whining about their jobs and plotting seductions; the next minute the yuppies morph into murderous savages who kill each other with cocktail forks, stemware and their bare hands. What could have made 93 model citizens run berserk? Since Eve's billionaire husband, Roarke, owns On the Rocks, he's involved in the case from the beginning, but it's the personnel of the police lab, not Roarke's minions, who figure out that the disaster was caused by a nefarious gas based on LSD and tweaked with even more dangerous hallucinogens. The attack was so successful that there's bound to be another one, and so there is, at nearby Cafe West. But this second outrage leads to a breakthrough when Eve realizes that the two episodes both involve a group of employees from the marketing department of Stevenson and Reede. And the case cracks wide open when she links both attacks to the wild schemes of the late crackpot scientist Guiseppi Menzini and the Red Horse terrorist network. Fighting off nightmares that connect her latest investigation to the unfortunate birth parents she identified in New York to Dallas (2011), she zeroes in on the killer. The detection is uninspired and a bit of a slog. As so often in this bestselling series, the high point is the police interrogation of the perp--this time by a corps of five strong women who unite to bamboozle him in a most satisfying way.

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September 15, 2012
Happy hour in a Manhattan bar becomes a scene of carnage when a potent hallucinogenic-drug mixture, released into the air, causes everyone inside to attack everyone else. While members of the NYPD unit headed by Lieutenant Eve Dallas soon identify the drugs, they can't stop another incident days later at a nearby cafe. With a total of 127 dead and the looming threat of another incident, Dallas and her colleagues (with Dallas' billionaire husband, Roarke, who owns the bar, serving as a consultant) race to check out victims, including the few who survived the attack, as they search for connections and motives, with an unexpected assist from the historical knowledge of Roarke's live-in butler. Although sleepless for days, Dallas remains at the top of her game in this thirty-fifth entry in this suspense series by the prolific Robb (aka Nora Roberts); and even with the help of modern technology, it's still dogged police work and keen intuition that solve crimes. With its final twist, this is a compelling addition to a best-selling series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)