Publishers Weekly
07/02/2018
Bestseller Robb’s gripping 47th thriller set in a near-future New York City (after Dark in Death) opens with a bang. One morning, Paul Rogan arrives at a Downtown Manhattan office building, where he’s to participate in a meeting about a merger between his company, Quantum Air, and another company, EconoLife. Shortly after entering the conference room, Rogan detonates the suicide vest he’s wearing, killing himself and 10 others. At the scene, Lt. Eve Dallas and her team have to wonder whether the suicide bombing was an act of terrorism or homicide. When they interview Rogan’s wife, Cecily, and their eight-year-old daughter, Melody, they learn that two men broke into the Rogans’ brownstone earlier and threatened to kill Cecily and Melody, or worse, unless Rogan did their bidding. Robb keeps the action moving as the members of her ensemble cast interview survivors, analyze the bomb used, and gain enough clues to identify the villains. Series fans will be enthralled. 750,000-copy announced first printing. Agent: Amy Berkower, Writers House. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
"Robb again remixes and remasters all the addictively readable ingredients her readers have come to crave, including a tough-as-nails protagonist who takes guff from no one, a plethora of engaging secondary characters who each play their roles to perfection, a generous dash of hot-as-sin sex, and a fine-tuned, tautly paced plot that relentlessly ticks along to the book’s satisfying conclusion." – Booklist
SEPTEMBER 2018 - AudioFile
Narrator Susan Ericksen is at it again with the latest J.D. Robb police procedural. Lieutenant Eve Dallas is called to the aftermath of a suicide bombing on Wall Street that was timed to coincide with a corporate merger. The bomber was a beloved employee who was forced into wearing the explosive vest under the threat of losing his wife and child if he didn’t cooperate. With the merger set to go on anyway, Eve works to uncover the motive of the family’s captors. It’s pure delight to hear the rich Irish accent of Eve’s partner in life, and often in investigation, Roarke. Ericksen’s voice as Eve’s official detective partner, Peabody, sounds a bit goofy in tone, but then again, so is the lovable sunny sidekick whose speech swells with incredulity and wit. A.L.C. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2018-06-18
The 44th case for future-dwelling Lt. Eve Dallas is less whodunit than whydunit and howtocatchem.On the day appointed for the merger between Quantum Air and EconoLift, Quantum marketing VP Paul Rogan arises from his seat at the table, apologizes to Derrick Pearson, the CEO who's come to treat him like a son, then detonates a suicide vest containing enough explosives to kill himself, Pearson, and nine others—although not, as it happens, EconoLift president Willimena Karson, who's merely sent to the hospital in critical condition. Eve and her partner, Detective Delia Peabody, soon realize that the reason a treasured employee would do such a thing is that he felt he had no choice: A pair of masked killers had taken his wife and daughter hostage and threatened to kill them and worse if he didn't follow their murderous orders. But why would anyone take so much trouble to blow up the meeting room instead of either killing their chosen target individually or detonating enough explosives to blow up the whole floor of the building? That's the question Eve focuses on, and when she comes up with a plausible explanation, she realizes that whoever pulled off this high-fatality caper has every reason to try it again. She's too late to prevent another blast, which claims five more victims at an art gallery, but the second time around provides her with enough clues to narrow her list of suspects dramatically—though fans should be warned that from this point on, Eve's detective work is a bit of a slog, and the main event yet to come, as so often in this series (Dark in Death, 2018, etc.), is Eve's interrogations of the suspects she's hauled in.A nifty, if exceptionally coldblooded, criminal plan buried in close to 400 pages of mostly forgettable suspects and dialogue. There's not even much detail about the good life in 2061 this time around.
