Book Review: Celebrity In Death by JD Robb

From GoodReads: Lieutenant Eve Dallas is no party girl, but she’s managing to have a reasonably good time at the celebrity-packed bash  celebrating “The Icove Agenda,” a film based on one of her famous cases. It’s a little spooky seeing the actress playing her, who looks almost like her long-lost twin. Not as unsettling, though, as seeing the actress who plays Peabody drowned in the lap pool on the roof of the director’s luxury building. Now she’s at the center of a crime scene-and Eve is more than ready to get out of her high heels and strap on her holster and step into the role she was born to play: cop.

IMO, Celebrity In Death is as enjoyable as all the other In Death books. Slower paced – there is a dearth of stabbings, shootings, chase scenes and other mayhem. There is no drama between Eve and Roark (I do so enjoy the drama.) Still fun to read though. It’s quite a bit funnier than previous books.

The murder victim in not very sympathetic at all. Her death is unsettling, because she’s looks so much like Peabody and it’s like a preview of what Peabody would like in death. Unsettling, but not really sympathetic because the victim is mean and no one likes her. (She basically tells Peabody she is a weak, pathetic cop. Which Peabody isn’t. Very insulting. I am insulted on Peabody’s behalf.)

Still. She is murdered, to celebrate the movie made from a previous case, and Eve investigates. She talks to people, figures out timelines, the placement of everyone who had reason to want the actress dead. Nora Roberts throws out the usual red herrings, nothing major there.

For someone like me, who has read all of the previous books, there are no earth shattering revelations. It’s a good fun read. That’s enough.

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Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells: You Are A Writer

I was reading The Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells by Ben Bova and this quote from Ernest Hemingway jumped out at me:

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that it all happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.

I think this is the best idea of what makes a writer that I have ever seen. That it comes from a writer whose works I don’t usually enjoy strikes me as odd.

I think this is the ideal. You want all that, you want the reader to feel the story so deeply that they don’t forgot, so deeply that they come back to the story over and over again.You want the reader to get lost in the story and never want to leave. You want the reader to care deeply about the character’s sorrow and joy.

I also think it’s incredibly rare and that stories that do this won’t be the same from everyone. It’s too subjective.

Even so. I think to feel that way, you need a character you really connect to. I mean, as a reader I know I do. If a book doesn’t have a character I like, it’s very hard for me to read it. (This is why Game of Thrones remains unread on my kindle.)

And by connecting, I don’t mean the reader has to see themselves in the character. I really, really don’t see myself in Eve Dallas, Jaenelle Angelline or Miles Vorkosigan – three characters I love most and series I reread frequently. But I still connect, I still sympathize with them and I still like spending time with them.

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Audiobooks and Impressions

So, I was listening to the audio version of Treachery in Death by JD Robb yesterday and it seems to me that “fuck” showed up more often than usual.

Now, I’ve read every other In Death book. Actually read, not listened to on my mp3 player. I don’t think the word fuck appears quite so much in them. Or maybe it does and I just didn’t notice. It’s possible – whoever reads it probably emphasizes some things over others. I guess it depends on how they say the words.

I mean, I thought Peabody used the word a lot more here. It doesn’t fit my mental image of her – sweet and solid. (The narrator’s voice for her doesn’t fit my image of her, either).

So I am thinking now maybe listening to a book instead of reading it somehow alters my impression of a book. How I see the characters, what parts I pay attention to, how I perceive the book.

Indulgence in Death by JD Robb

First it was a limo driver shot through the neck with a crossbow. Then it was a high-priced escort found stabbed through the heart with a bayonet.

Random hits, thrill kills, murderers with a taste for the finer things in life-and death-are making NYPSD Lieutenant Eve Dallas angry. And an angry Eve can be just as an efficient and dangerous predator as the killer.

As time runs out on another innocent victim’s life, Eve’s investigation will take her into the rarefied circle that her husband, Roarke, travels in-and into the perverted heart of madness…

Indulgence in Death, the latest in the In Death series, came out yesterday. I gobbled it up like it was a rich gooey chocolate cake. Like every other In Death book, it is a good fast read. Indulgence in Death has its share of funny moments. Probably more than the other books. I don’t think it as intense as other books in the series.

Finding who the murderers are isn’t the point; we find out who the murderers are less than half way through and JD Robb hinted at their identity even earlier than that. No, I think the point was how Eve brought them to justice. The murderers are very good, almost perfect, and getting enough evidence for just a search warrant was difficult.

The way the murderers go about, well, murdering, that is a bit chilling. They come off as monsters and I think that is probably what the author is going for.

On the other hand, the book begins in Ireland. Eve gives him their two year anniversary present there – very romantic!!! – and they find a body nearby. I know the whole point was to give Roarke his present. A murder happens and I was expecting that murder to have something to do with the rest of the story. But it didn’t. I don’t know why that murder was there in the first place. The whole present giving scene was so romantic and perfect that I really don’t think it needed a murder to enliven it. I just don’t know why it was there. It seems superfluous.

For that reason, I have to say it wasn’t as good as the other books in this series. But still worth reading.