Stolen in Death is J. D. Robb’s 62nd installment in her long running In Death series. To give you perspective about how long she’s been writing these, the first installment, Naked in Death was published in 1995. Bill Clinton was still in his first term as President, women everywhere were listening to Alanis Morisette’s Jagged Little Pill on repeat, and Clueless made yellow plaid iconic.
At this point, J. D. Robb has a definite formula for these books. Something terrible happens to someone, Lt. Eve Dallas is called in to investigate, they find some way to involve her love interest, Roarke, and she solves the crime by walking around and talking to people and getting in the occasional fist fight. There is an enormous cast of supporting characters at this point. In fact, the supporting cast is so large that they don’t all get mentioned in every book. Or if they are mentioned, often it’s only in passing.
Sometimes I’m surprised by where the mystery goes, most of the time not. In this specific case, it was a little of both. I’m not really going to go into details in case you decide to read it, but there is a MacGuffin of rather historical significance included. At least it is significant in this alternative reality. Things like it exist in our timeline, but not this specific item.
And, honestly, while you technically could read this one as an entry level, I don’t think I’d recommend it. A lot of shorthand references would be missed because of the amount of world building that has happened in the previous 61 installments. I think I may have finally reached my saturation point. I remain fond of these characters, but it took me four days to read this latest installment. I kept getting distracted and putting it down because it didn’t hold my interest. In the past, I zipped through these books in 4 or 5 hours without stopping.
I purchased Stolen in Death for my Kindle via Amazon, but this book is available at just about any retailer that carries mysteries.
2.5 of 5 stars, so I’ll round up to a 3.
