Naked in Death, J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts)

Boy, this didn't work for me at all. I can see where it'd work for someone else, but to me it read as creepy, creepy sexual fetishization and death fetishization. Someday I'd love to read a noir that doesn't involve a prostitute getting killed in the first chapter, but that day may not come for a while.

I couldn't take Eve seriously as a super-tough icy-cold detective because she slept with her suspect. Yeah, she had a gut feeling it wasn't him. And I couldn't enjoy him breaking down her barriers because he was a dick about it who didn't respect her privacy or her personal boundaries. Plus, Nora Roberts has always had a little bit of a POV problem; she jumps from his to hers in the middle of the goddamn scene, and I hate that. 

In the next-to-last chapter I was literally flipping the pages going, "Oh my god, I KNOW. There's another killer, he's going to break into her apartment, and the fucking cat scratches him, allowing her to fight for her life. IS THIS OVER YET?"

Grrrr, etc.

Grade: D

Originally posted 2008