Brought to you by OBS reviewer Heidi
The tenth installment of the futuristic In Death series starts out with Roarke and Eve enjoying a night out together. Roarke has taken Eve to a performance of the play Witness at his very own New Globe Theater. Eve has been speculating the outcome all along and is rocked when the woman scorned in the play stabs the man that betrayed her. And when Eve realizes that not everyone is acting and that actor, Richard Draco, really was stabbed she goes back on duty to find the person who switched the prop knife for a real one.
Now Eve must scour through testimony of all the on-stage performers, the behind-the-scenes workers, and thousands of witnesses to decipher who is sincere and who is acting and just who wanted to bring murder to center stage in a very dramatic way.
I thought this book had a very interesting premise behind it; an on-stage murder turned into a real murder in front of thousands of witnesses. Every actor a suspect….but who is being sincere and who is just putting on a really good performance?
This book started out really strong. It was great to see Eve and Roarke actually having a night out together and seeing Eve so wrapped up in the performance. And I thought the idea of a murder being acted out under the guise of a scripted performance was ingenious. It made me wonder as I always do with this series, just where does Roberts get these ideas for her storylines from??
There were many characters to choose from in this book that could have been the killer and for once I actually chose correctly; although at times I did start to second-guess myself!! There were the women scorned by the arrogant Draco, the understudy waiting for his chance in the spotlight, the older actress that he never looked twice at just to name a few.
I was a bit annoyed at Roarke in the beginning though because he seemed so cold and even kind of mean toward Eve when she was just doing her job; she can’t help that it happened at one of the many establishments he owns. Not to mention how he let Areena attach herself to him and almost seemed like he was more on her side than Eve’s.
I enjoyed seeing McNab and Peabody getting more involved although I would have liked to have seen the moment where they actually decided to become more regular (if not exclusive) play out in the book instead of it being something that happened between books. I was waiting for some confrontation between Charles and McNab to occur, but it didn’t. Maybe in a future installment???
And speaking of Peabody, I was a little bummed that her brother, Zeke, wasn’t still around. I greatly enjoyed him in the last installment and was kind of hoping he would decide to stay in New York for a while, but I guess not.
Also, I was surprised that this didn’t have the usual big confrontation at the end between Eve and the murderer that puts Eve’s life in danger and ultimately leads Roarke to thank his lucky stars she’s alive as he carts her off against her will for medical attention. I’ve grown so used to that scene that this book almost felt incomplete without it.
Overall I liked the book, but it definitely wasn’t the best of the series. I can’t wait to see what else the great mind of Nora Roberts has in store for Eve, Roarke, Peabody, Mcnab, and all the others.
