Portrait in Death
In Death, Book #16
By J.D. Robb
ISBN# 9780739433508
Author’s Site: http://www.jdrobb.com/

Brought to you by OBS reviewer Heidi

We’re back (or is that forward) in futuristic New York in the 16th installment of Nora Robert’s In Death series written under her pseudo name, J.D. Robb.

Eve is ecstatic that Summerset is finally going to take a vacation and will be out of her hair and the house for three glorious weeks when he trips over the cat and breaks his leg causing him to postpone his trip.  And while Roarke is getting him all squared away Eve catches a case.

Nadine contacts Eve because she was sent a note from the killer along with pictures the killer took.  The first picture was taken before the victim was killed without the victim’s knowledge and the second picture was taken after the murder, one where the killer posed the victim just as he wanted her.  The info that was given to Nadine leads them to a recycler across from where the victim, a young college student, works.  But the killer isn’t done as he has more pictures to take to finish his masterpiece and it’s up to Eve to figure out how to stop him.

While Eve is in the middle of her investigation and Summerset is laid up, Roarke gets some world-altering news of his own.  The mother that he remembers leaving him wasn’t his mother at all and that his father murdered his real mom who actually loved him.  He has no idea what to do with this news and tries his best to push Eve away and deal with all his feelings on his own.

There was a lot going on in this book.  I was never bored and the storylines kept me interested, but for some reason the book was just OK to me, not really sure why.

I thought the killer was interesting, but completely sick.  I can’t even look at a dead fish so I can’t imagine killing someone and then taking their picture postmortem.

I found Roarke’s personal woes to be really entertaining (not in a happy way, but in a what will happen next totally engrossed kind of way) and I just wanted to see more.  He was an idiot for not including his wife in what was going on though; he had to know she’d find out eventually.  It was interesting to see Roarke and Eve with Roarke’s new family knowing that neither of them have ever had that and had no idea what to do.

It was great to see Trueheart again and I was screaming in my head “NO!!!” when he was taken as the killer’s last victim even though I knew he’d be saved.  He is just so sweet and innocent it’s hard not to like him and I really hope he gets a girlfriend of his own in the future installments of the series.

I wish there was more of Peabody and McNab’s relationship in this one and hey….Eve never did ask Roarke if he had any rentals for them.