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A review by tita_noir
Salvation in Death by J.D. Robb
4.0
I just re-read to this one. This is the second time I've read this book. All the books prior to this one, I've read multiple times. So it is interesting for me to do a second read for the books this point on.
I really liked this book at lot mainly because unlike most of the previous books in this series, this one concentrates primarily on one murder. Not a serial killer. Not a person who goes out and kills more to cover up the first killing. Just mainly one murder case.
There is a second similar murder case, but it doesn't really attach with the first one. Again, a bit of an anomaly with this series. In some past installments, when Eve gets two seemingly disparate cases, they always conveniently converge in the end be the same case. This has always caused me some frustration. The only time this convention has made perfect sense was in the preceding book [b:Strangers in Death|1158706|Strangers in Death (In Death, #26)|J.D. Robb|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1266732561s/1158706.jpg|2501504]. It was an absolute necessity for that book. But for all the rest, too convenient to be plausible all the time.
But back to this one and why I liked it so much....
For one thing I loved how the story was constructed. In this one, it plays out like a true mystery. At the core of the story is the victim, a priest who dies while presiding over the Catholic funeral mass of a beloved member of a close knit Latino community in Spanish Harlem. The thrust of the story and Eve's investigation is the personality of the priest. In order to find out who killed him, Eve needs to learn about Fr. Flores.
And the fun of the book is each revelation. Each layer that is peeled back from the victim. It reads like a very twisty character study of a troubled person. In the end the person who killed him is almost incidental. The real story was all about him and his life and the choices he made that resulted in his murder.
A second murder involving a fire and brimstone televangelist also comes across Eve's desk as she is investigating Fr. Flores' murder. Both religious figures were killed in the same manner, so Eve assumes a connection.
Underneath it all, I liked how Robb worked in many of the themes important to religion: Guilt, Redemption, Absolution. I also thought she did a great job of being respectful to the religious.
Eve is not religious at all. She is baffled by it and her only belief is in law and order. It would have been easy to make Eve contemptuous of religion or even to take pot shots at the over-the-top spectacle aspect of the televangelist. But Robb doesn't go there. Under all the big hair, make up, dazzling lights and Southern accents she made the evangelical people as reverential and true in their religious beliefs as she did the Catholics.
Eve is as respectful of the respective institution's religious rules as she is of man-made laws. She is however spitting mad -- completely in character -- when she realizes that Flores' killer has confessed to a priest during the confessional and the priest won't give the person up.
However what did surprise me is how in one scene Robb made Eve incredibly unsympathetic and contemptuous of a victim of domestic abuse. Long time readers of the series will know that child abuse and molestation is one of Eve's triggers. And the poor woman who was unaware her daughter was being abused set off Eve in a nuclear way. Truthfully, it took a little shine off of Eve for me.
Since this was a very close intimate look at the victim, this installment did not use a lot of the regular characters. This was fine with me. Like I've said in previous reviews, I enjoy how she mixes it up in the series. It keeps it feeling fresh.
I really liked this book at lot mainly because unlike most of the previous books in this series, this one concentrates primarily on one murder. Not a serial killer. Not a person who goes out and kills more to cover up the first killing. Just mainly one murder case.
There is a second similar murder case, but it doesn't really attach with the first one. Again, a bit of an anomaly with this series. In some past installments, when Eve gets two seemingly disparate cases, they always conveniently converge in the end be the same case. This has always caused me some frustration. The only time this convention has made perfect sense was in the preceding book [b:Strangers in Death|1158706|Strangers in Death (In Death, #26)|J.D. Robb|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1266732561s/1158706.jpg|2501504]. It was an absolute necessity for that book. But for all the rest, too convenient to be plausible all the time.
But back to this one and why I liked it so much....
For one thing I loved how the story was constructed. In this one, it plays out like a true mystery. At the core of the story is the victim, a priest who dies while presiding over the Catholic funeral mass of a beloved member of a close knit Latino community in Spanish Harlem. The thrust of the story and Eve's investigation is the personality of the priest. In order to find out who killed him, Eve needs to learn about Fr. Flores.
And the fun of the book is each revelation. Each layer that is peeled back from the victim. It reads like a very twisty character study of a troubled person. In the end the person who killed him is almost incidental. The real story was all about him and his life and the choices he made that resulted in his murder.
A second murder involving a fire and brimstone televangelist also comes across Eve's desk as she is investigating Fr. Flores' murder. Both religious figures were killed in the same manner, so Eve assumes a connection.
Underneath it all, I liked how Robb worked in many of the themes important to religion: Guilt, Redemption, Absolution. I also thought she did a great job of being respectful to the religious.
Eve is not religious at all. She is baffled by it and her only belief is in law and order. It would have been easy to make Eve contemptuous of religion or even to take pot shots at the over-the-top spectacle aspect of the televangelist. But Robb doesn't go there. Under all the big hair, make up, dazzling lights and Southern accents she made the evangelical people as reverential and true in their religious beliefs as she did the Catholics.
Eve is as respectful of the respective institution's religious rules as she is of man-made laws. She is however spitting mad -- completely in character -- when she realizes that Flores' killer has confessed to a priest during the confessional and the priest won't give the person up.
However what did surprise me is how in one scene Robb made Eve incredibly unsympathetic and contemptuous of a victim of domestic abuse. Long time readers of the series will know that child abuse and molestation is one of Eve's triggers. And the poor woman who was unaware her daughter was being abused set off Eve in a nuclear way. Truthfully, it took a little shine off of Eve for me.
Since this was a very close intimate look at the victim, this installment did not use a lot of the regular characters. This was fine with me. Like I've said in previous reviews, I enjoy how she mixes it up in the series. It keeps it feeling fresh.