"Fantastic and exciting futuristic police procedural"

In the year 2059, Police Lieutenant Eve Dallas of the New York Police and Security Department walks into her office and finds a nightmare sitting on her chair. The child Eve was given to Trudy for fostering, but the powers that be had no idea that she was an abusive predator who took a broken child and tortured her. Eve escaped by running away and spent time in Juvie, a safer place

The adult Eve throws Trudy out of her office; the next day Trudy goes to Eve's billionaire husband Roarke to blackmail him in exchange for her silence on his wife's past. He kicks her out of his office and tells her what he will to do to her if she bothers Eve again. Roarke and Eve go to Trudy's room to confront her and tell her they will not give in to blackmail but by the time they reach her, she is dead, the victim of murder. Eve manages to be the primary on the case in order to get justice for Trudy who many like Roarke believe doesn't deserve it and but the cop can put the worst of her childhood to rest.

Trudy is evil, a woman who will go to any lengths to get what she wants. She likes to hurt people, especially those she fostered and then blackmailed when they were old enough to pay her. Eve is a strong woman who pushes her vulnerabilities aside in order to conduct the investigation to the best of her ability. J.D. Robb once again writes a fantastic and exciting futuristic police procedural.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted December 28, 2005

Summary

The #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Survivor in Death has Lieutenant Eve Dallas walking a tightrope between her professional duties and her private demons.

Eve Dallas is one tough cop. She's got no problem dealing with a holiday reveler in a red suit who plunges thirty-seven stories and gives new meaning to the term "sidewalk Santa." But when she gets back to the station and Trudy Lombard shows up, it's all Eve can do to hold it together. Instantly, she's thrown back into the past, to the days when she was a vulnerable, traumatized girl—trapped in foster care with the twisted woman who now sits in front of her, smiling.

Trudy claims she just wanted to see how Eve was doing. But Eve's husband, Roarke, suspects otherwise—and his suspicions prove correct when Trudy arrives at his office, demanding money in exchange for keeping the ugly details of his wife's childhood a secret. Barely restraining himself, Roarke shows her the door—and makes it clear that she'd be wise to get out of New York and never bother him or his wife again.

But just a few days later, Trudy's found on the floor of her hotel room, a mess of bruises and blood. A cop to the core, Eve is determined to solve the case, if only for the sake of Trudy's bereaved son. Unfortunately, Eve is not the only one to have suffered at this woman's hands, and she and Roarke will follow a circuitous, dangerous path to find out who turned this victimizer into a victim.