β Scribed by J. D. Robb
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Holy communion spells death for Fr. Miguel Flores, a popular Catholic priest in New York City's Spanish Harlem, after he swallows wine laced with cyanide during a funeral in bestseller Robb's unusually introspective 27th crime thriller to feature Lt. Eve Dallas (after Strangers in Death). The ensuing homicide investigation suggests that Flores could actually be Lino Martinez, a former member of a disbanded gang, the Soldados, suspected of two bombings before he disappeared. The death by cyanide of another religious figure, Jimmy Jay Jenkins, founder of the Church of Eternal Light, complicates matters. Are the two murders connected? Sussing out the answer to that question involves some serious digging. Dallas's husband, Roarke, and fun sidekick, Det. Delia Peabody, lend support. Robb offers a multilayered solution to several crimes that serves as yet another reminder that wolves sometimes hide in sheep's (or priest's) clothing, but justice, like faith, has no expiration date. (Nov.)
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The Eve Dallas series of near-future mysteries rolls comfortably along in this latest installment, the twenty-ninth. The series began in 1995 so the author can fairly be accused of cranking them out (shes also published a book or two under her real name, Nora Roberts). Despite being a lesser product of the Roberts machine, the Dallas novels have a certain charm, in a mass-produced kind of way. The near-future setting (the mid-twenty-first century) is nicely realized without being too excessively detailed; the protagonist, homicide detective Dallas, is a likable and strong character, well able to support a multivolume series; and the casesincluding this one, about a murder in an ancient church, the aftermath of which reveals that the victim might not have been the gentle Catholic priest his parishioners thought he wasare imaginative and suspenseful. The dialogue is a little clumsy, and the narrative passages sometimes seem a bit contrived, but theres a reason so many Dallas novels have appeared in so short a time: they sell. So will this one. --David Pitt
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