Brought to you by OBS reviewer Heidi

*Beware of Spoilers*

Divided in Death is the 18th installment of Nora Roberts’s futuristic In Death series written under her pseudo name, J.D. Robb.  It centers around homicide Lieutenant Eve Dallas and her sexy rich husband, Roarke, who wasn’t always on the good side of the law.

This book starts out with Roarke getting a call from his admin, Caro, in the middle of the night, prompting him to ask Eve for a favor.  Caro’s daughter, Reva, had just found out her husband, Blair, was cheating on her and when she went to confront him she finds him and her best friend in bed together; dead.  Roarke wants Eve to take the case and help clear Reva of the charges.

When Eve gets on-scene it doesn’t look good for Reva.  All signs point to a crime of passion.  But something doesn’t jibe for Eve.  It seems a little too perfect from the murder weapon, Reva’s kitchen knife, sticking out of the mattress to a toilet perfectly wiped down except one of Reva’s bloody fingerprints.  The whole situation just screams setup and it’s up to Eve to figure out just who would benefit from Blair’s death and Reva’s imprisonment.  And the situation gets even dicier when she discovers that Homeland Security (HSO) is behind the whole thing.

I’ll be honest when I read the blurb on this book; I figured it would be a snoozer for me.  I’m just not into the whole techno-terrorist and conspiracy theory type of storylines.  I was hoping I would be pleasantly surprised, but unfortunately I wasn’t.

*Skip the Next paragraph if you don’t want to know how the book ends/who the killer is*

The whole Homeland Security spying on people and killing off civilians just wasn’t very interesting to me.  The only thing that really piqued my interest at all was the supposed victim turning out to be the killer.  It seemed a bit far-fetched when Eve was suggesting it and then it turns out to be what happened.

But I don’t know what it is about when Roarke and Eve have marital problems that interests me.  That was definitely the saving grace of this book.  Eve and Roarke were fighting over what to do after finding out the HSO knew what had happened to her as a child and did nothing to stop it.  Obviously, Roarke wanted to get vengeance for what she went through and Eve didn’t want him to do something that could lead him to getting put in a cage.  I was surprised when Roarke didn’t make them pay at all.  I understand him not killing them because it hurt Eve, but I would have expected him to do something to ruin them professionally at the very least.  I have a feeling this decision may come to bite him later on in the series, but time will tell.

This book was just OK to me, it was just too techy for my tastes in general, but someone who likes that stuff along with the spy and espionage angle would probably enjoy it immensely.