Book Review: Creation In Death (In Death #25) by J.D. Robb

Eve has seen this crime scene before: the artfully arranged body of a young brunette, arms spread, palms up, body marked by the signs of prolonged and painful torture. Carved into her torso is the time it took her to die - in hours, minutes, and seconds. And on the third finger of her left hand has been placed a silver ring. Eve is catapulted back to a case nine years earlier, when a man whom the media tagged "The Groom" put the city on edge with a killing spree that took the lives of four women in fifteen days. Eve and her partner Feeney, her friend and mentor, couldn't stop him before he disappeared, only to resurface in other parts of the world to kill and kill again. But now The Groom seems to have come back to where he started. When it turns out that The Groom's most recent victim was employed by Eve's billionaire husband, Roarke, she brings him onto the case. A move that proves fitting when it becomes chillingly clear that the killer has made it personal. The corpse was washed in products from a store Roarke owns and laid out on a sheet his company manufactures. With the Groom's monstrous return, Eve is determined to finish him once and for all. Familiar with his methods, she knows that he has already grabbed his next victim. But his sights are set on the biggest challenge of his illustrious career - an abduction that will test his skills and that promises to give him satisfaction as he's never known. Time is running out on another woman's life and for Eve...

Creation in Death is the twenty-fifth book in the In Death series written by Nora Roberts (writing as J.D. Robb).  I've been slowly reading all the books in this series (and some of the novellas in between numbers) for over a year now.

The characters are real and engaging.  They have grown and changed through the whole series.   I enjoy how Roarke and Eve support and care about each other, even though they tend to fight a lot.  Most of the characters have some snarkiness to them, and the sarcastic jibs help lighten the story which is about torture and murder.

The book is written well, the action is fast paced.  It's hard to put this book down once you start reading it!  Even though this book is later in the series, you can read it as a stand alone if you wish.  But to get the full background on the characters and their stories, start from the first one, Naked in Death.

 I give this book 4 Bookworms.

Book Review: The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike #1) by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)

After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office.

Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.

You may think you know detectives, but you've never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you've never seen them under an investigation like this.

The Cuckoo's Calling is written by Robert Galbraith, a pseudonym of J.K. Rowling.  It is quite the departure from the Harry Potter series!   Unfortunately, I found the story only average.  It was a fairly typical murder mystery, nothing made it stand out.  Actually, some of the clues that were found by the detective were a bit outlandish.  

However, the detective himself, Cormoran Strike, is a good, solid character.  He has faults, but he works hard to do the right thing.  His relationship with his temp secretary Robin is sweet, though there could be problems there in later books.

The biggest problem I had with the book was it was too long.  Over 450 pages and the same evidence was gone over and over.  Occasionally the reader is given a glimpse of new evidence or old evidence in a different light, but most of it comes out in the exposé Strike gives at the end.

The Cuckoo's Calling is formed in the classic detective style. If you are a fan of Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes, you might want to give this a try.  Cormoran Strike doesn't completely stack up against them, but it is interesting.

 I give this book 3 Bookworms.