Friday, March 10, 2023

FFB Review: Three in Death by J. D. Robb


Recently on one of my reviews in this series, Jerry House mentioned in a comment that there were also novellas. I had seen something to that effect before, but had not gone looking. Jerry’s comment got me looking in the Dallas Library system where I found a few bundled together in groups of three. Three in Death is one of those bundled novella collections.  It contains the novellas titled, Interlude in Death, Midnight in Death, and Haunted in Death.

 

It is the spring of 2059 as Interlude in Death opens and Lieutenant Eve Dallas of the NYPSD is unhappily off planet. Even worse than the fact she is off planet, something she does not like at all, is the  fact that she has been ordered to give a seminar on murder at the Interplanetary Law Enforcement and Security Conference. It is being held at the Olympus Resort in a hotel owned by her husband. She isn’t happy at all about any of it. Though, as she grudgingly admits, the resort does have some perks. One of those is the fact that her husband, Roarke, is with her and has some tricks to help her mood.

 

Peabody and a number of other coworkers are also in attendance. So too is the legendary former commander Douglas R. Skinner. Within a few minutes of meeting him, it is clear that Skinner is going after her husband. He foolishly wanted the help of Dallas. Predictably, that went nowhere.  One knows a murder will soon happen.

 

The reader is not disappointed as soon one of the men in Skinner’s detail is very much dead. Dallas is off planet and out of her jurisdiction, and quite possibly a suspect, but that is not going to stop her from working the case.

 

Midnight in Death is next and opens on Christmas morning. It was supposed to be their first Christmas together. Instead of being home with her husband and taking a much-needed break after a recent brutal case, she is standing over a body before dawn in the below freezing cold.

 

The very dead body at her feet is Judge Harold Wainger. He is naked and was dumped in the center of the ice rink at Rockefeller Center. It is clear he has been on ice for quite some time. It is also clear he was beaten and tortured extensively before he died.

 

A cryptic note and a list of those he plans to also torture and kill was left with the body. David Palmer is back in town and up to his old ways. So much for having him locked away for his previous savage crimes. It would have been nice if those in charge at the prison had alerted Dallas that he had escaped their custody. He is back and Dallas is in a race to find him as he keeps grabbing folks on the list despite all her security efforts.

 

It is January 2060 as Haunted in Death begins and Dallas is in a cold room in a derelict and abandoned building. She is with Peabody at the site of another murder.  Radcliff C. Hopkins III is very much dead thanks to being shot multiple times by a gun of some type. While guns are outlawed, there are still some around and clearly one was at work here. So too was rage.

 

He is a grandson of a legendary rock and roll family that made its fortune and name back in the late 60s.  Legend has it that the grandfather overdosed in the building that housed his club. Legend has it that the building is very much haunted. “Number Twelve” is a disaster for anyone who ever tries to live or run a business out of the building. Now his grandson is dead on the floor in a room of the old building.

 

Lieutenant Dallas does not believe in the paranormal. In the here and now of January 2060 she is going to go through some things in that building that just might make her rethink her stance. One thing that she is sure of is that ghosts don’t kill people. Flesh and blood real people do and she has a living killer to catch.

 

The three reads in this Three in Death collection are all good ones. Fun novellas, they more quickly and entertain the reader. While not as quite as complicated as full-length books, all three are fairly complicated, and are well worth your time.

 

 

My reading copy came via the Overdrive/Libby App of the Dallas Public Library System.

 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2023

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