Vendetta in Death by JD Robb, narrated by Susan Ericksen – B Book 49 in the series takes place in about 4 days from start to finish and is obviously heavily inspired by #MeToo. At first I was a little worried about the killer being a woman who calls herself “Lady Justice” and abducts, tortures and kills men she has judged as being lacking. The first victim was certainly someone who inspired little sympathy (very much a Harvey Weinstein/Roger Ailes type character, albeit in a different industry). I didn’t want to read a story where the victims were all horrible men – I felt like that would have been too on the nose for me. However, after a while I saw that Robb did something clever here. There were a couple of victims/targets who did little more than divorce their wives (we aren’t privy to all the circumstances, though in some cases we can guess) and this served to illustrate that Lady Justice wasn’t really about “justice” at all. It was not a case of the punishment necessarily fitting the “crime” – in some cases, there was no crime. There were also multiple stories about women who had been assaulted by men, sexually or otherwise. Their stories were (sadly) more familiar and here, justice bent toward them – actual justice; because Eve Dallas and Delia Peabody were on the case. There was a a strong believe women vibe and no endorsement of toxic male behaviour. So it wasn’t the book I feared at all.

The identity of the killer isn’t a massive secret; the reveal is fairly early on in the piece, something that occurs fairly regularly in the series. How Eve puts it together and how she gets her woman are really what the story is about of course. The pacing is fast and tight, the story engaging, if a little (or a lot) brutal at times (again, not unusual for an In Death book).

There’s not a huge focus on the relationship between Eve and Roarke – understandable given the short time frame of the story but there is some. The relationship between Eve and Peabody gets a boost in terms of focus and page time, something I appreciated.

The narration is, as usual, excellent. There were one or two “hers” instead of “his’s” but they are very minor errors in an otherwise great listen.

Book 49 and I’m still a fan.

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Reviews of these books will be up soon at AudioGals.