Brought to you by OBS reviewer Heidi

Origin in Death is the 21st installment of Nora Roberts’s In Death series written under the pen name of J.D. Robb and this one really amps up the sci-fi quotient and brings to the light a hot button topic; cloning.

The highly acclaimed Dr. Wilfred B. Icove, Sr has been murdered in his office at his center for reconstructive and cosmetic surgery.  His murderer was nothing if not efficient as she went in, got through all his security, stabbed the doctor neatly in the heart with a scalpel and waltzed right out.  They caught her on camera and the ID she had used to get through security was fake.

Then, while investigating Icove’s son, Dr. Will, he turns up dead as well.  This time in his own home, but with the same neat wound to the heart with a scalpel.

Eve knows that everything is not what it seems and that the good doctors must have been involved in something that was less than legal.  But she never in a million years expects what she uncovers; human cloning and gene manipulation; designer babies.  This book reminded me a lot of Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein series where Victor was trying to create a superior race.

The Icoves were trying to create the perfect human race and had even started planning to get natural conception outlawed since it’s flawed and they expected to get legislation passed to mandate sterilization.

Eve puts it altogether and figures out that some of the Icoves “projects” came back to take them out to keep them from doing to others what has been done to them.  But when one of the murderers turns out to be three perfect clones of each other all claiming to be one, things get a little sticky.

I actually found the storyline of this book to be fascinating and it really kept my interest throughout the entire novel.  But with all that said, the book wasn’t a favorite of mine.  It seems when the sci-fi themes rear their ugly heads in this series, no matter how fascinating the concept, I can never feel more than a likeness for the book; greatness is just beyond my reach.

Eve is really involved in this case so you don’t get as much of the romance between Roarke and her that I love so much in this series.  The book is also lacking the sarcasm between Eve and just about everyone.  Maybe with those things in the story, it would have raised my level of enjoyment.

With Thanksgiving nearing we did get to see Roarke getting unnerved planning his first ever family get-together, which was sweet, but not really that exciting or entertaining.

I really like this series and I enjoy seeing things that you can totally see happening in the very distant future if certain people are left to run rampant.  This book highlights my very fears with science’s advancement in cloning and explores some ethical and moral questions about it; let’s just hope they never make it to human cloning in real life!!