Judgment in Death

Judgment in Death is the eleventh book in the In Death series, which Nora Roberts writes under the pen name J.D. Robb. The series is set in a near future New York City where Lieutenant Eve Dallas works homicide for the New York Police and Security Department. By 2000, when this entry was published, Roberts and Robb had already established the basic shape of the series. A grim murder, Eve’s relentless investigation, the supporting cast of cops and friends and the irrepressible billionaire husband Roarke, and a closing third that turns the screws hard before the resolution.

In this book the body is a dirty cop, found beaten to death in the bathroom of a club called Purgatory. The fact that the victim was crooked complicates the case in obvious ways, but Eve has her usual rule. She works for the dead regardless of who they were in life. As she pulls the threads, she finds herself looking at a much wider corruption inside her own department, and the case forces her to question who in her own command structure she can trust.

What keeps the In Death series going year after year is the way Roberts has built out the supporting cast. Peabody, Eve’s loyal partner. Roarke, the husband who is good at exactly the kinds of things a homicide cop is not supposed to need. Mavis, Mira, Feeney, Baxter, the whole crew. By book eleven they all feel like people you know, and Roberts uses that familiarity to make the procedural elements land harder. The romance and the mystery are equally important to the formula and Roberts handles both with the practiced confidence of someone who has been doing this for decades.