Memory in Death

It is December 2059 and St. Nick is very much dead on a street in Time Square. Humans, without parachutes, don’t do well when they go over the side of a building. In this case, when he went out a window and jumped from the 36th floor of the Broadway View Hotel. Witnesses report he was yelling “Ho, Ho, Ho” as he came down before crash landing on an innocent bystander who had the worst timing to pass by.

For Lieutenant Eve Dallas and her partner, Detective Peabody, their latest case is the deaths of Max Tubbs (Santa Claus in full outfit) and Leo Jacobs (innocent and unlucky bystander). Dallas designates Peabody as the primary on the case though she will, of course, heavily assist and guide the case.

Clearly some “recreational show more pharmaceuticals” were involved as it was definitely not a suicide. Through questioning Dallas learns that a group of coworkers pooled their money to rent a suite and buy some drugs from a dude known as Zero. The plan was for a holiday party. Nobody was supposed to do anything heavy drug wise. Certainly, nobody was supposed to die. Zero runs a club nearby. He is also her first clue on a case that is small potatoes compared to what is coming.

Dallas went through a lot in her childhood. The horror of her brutal past comes back in bits and pieces. Sometimes it is a crime scene that brings back what long has been buried. Sometimes it is the victim and what they went through. In this case it is the form of a long forgotten foster mother, Trudy.

Trudy, from long ago in Texas, shows up at Dallas’s job to get reacquainted. There was extensive media coverage after the last case and Trudy saw some of it. So, she knew Dallas was now in NYC and brought the family. Seeing her in the present violently rocks New York City Police and Security Department Lieutenant Eve Dallas to her core.

When she gets herself back together, she realizes that Trudy is in town for one thing and one thing only. She wants money. No doubt she wants a lot of money. She wants to use Dallas’s past as leverage to get paid. She did not count on Dallas and Roarke refusing. That wasn’t the only thing she did not count on.

What follows is another fast-paced read. Part mystery, part thriller, the action flows forward at a steady pace as Dallas, Peabody, and others solve their latest case. The year is 2059, but folks still murder for the classic reasons. In this case, greed kills.

My reading copy came in digital format by way of the OverDrive/Libby app and the Dallas Public Library System.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2023 show less

Happy sigh. This is one of my favorite re-reads. I tend to read it around the Christmas season. But seriously. I needed a happy (as it can be) In Death book. It gets to be a bit of a grind to just read about rape and murder in every other book.

Memory in Death (In Death #22) is a really good Eve Dallas and Roarke book. We get to spend about equal time with Roarke in this one. And I just sadly realized it's been a while since we got a significant third person POV of Roarke in an In Death book. Hmmm. I am going to have to go back through my re-reads and see when that dropped off. As I was saying, we get a lot of Eve a lot of Roarke and for once we actually get to delve into Eve's past. I really wish we got more information about her. Robb show more has gone fairly deep on Roarke's side of the family, but as long time readers know, we solve the mystery of Eve's mother and father in "New York to Dalls (In Death #33) and you would think that Eve just popped up at age 8 and then transformed into a cop. "Memory in Death" does such a good job of giving us more layers into Eve's life. I really do wish that Robb would revisit that well more in the recent books.

"Memory in Death" has Eve confronting her former foster mother (Trudy Lombard) who has come back to blackmail Eve once she finds out that Eve is now married to the richest man on the planet (look Roarke's a billionaire apparently several times over so I am just going with he is the richest at this point). Eve gets a nasty shock since recalling Trudy and the things she did to Eve as a kid (locking in her room and forcing her to take cold baths) throws her for a loop. When Trudy is found dead (hit with a sap) then the case turns toward Eve and Roarke. This was a really cool case to sink your teeth in. I didn't care about the victim, but it was still pretty awesome how Eve figured out who the doer was and why. And I of course wonder now what happened with the characters from that case. Too bad I don't think Robb has thrown out any comments.

We get to see Eve hit for a loop several times during this investigation. Due to the events in "Origin in Death (or as I call it now, the dreaded Icove case) Eve is on the outs with Dr. Mira. She is feeling even more unsettled when a woman she hasn't seen since she was a child popping up insisting that she's Eve's mother. Eve has an uncharacteristic scared response and then when she lets Roarke know about it...oh boy.

We get to see the dark side of Roarke that we don't really get to see much in the series anymore. I had to crack up when Trudy went and tried to shake down Roarke. Dude. Dude. Hotness.

We get a couple fight (my least favorite thing) between Eve and Roarke and honestly I was on Roarke's side on that one. Eve says some pretty terrible things to Roarke because she realizes that Trudy is only popping up due to her being married to him. She throws Roarke's mother's murder in his face and the fact that even though that was terrible he has a whole family in Ireland now (gah, I hated re-reading that. I cringed the whole time going oh no). Thankfully Eve and Roarke work through it.

What I thought was interesting this time through though is that Eve and Dr. Mira are on the outs because of Eve's last case. They both feel their way around each other, but I loved it when Eve and Dr. Mira worked through it. And this is the beginning of Eve starting to realize that Dr. Mira in her own way is Eve's mother and will mess someone up that will hurt one of her kids.

We get the usual characters of Peabody, McNabb and Feeney. Due to Eve's close ties in the case I thought it was hilarious that Peabody had to interview Roarke. We also get some other characters besides Eve's foster mother, her biological son Bobby who I just felt pity for throughout and Bobby's wife.

The writing was in terms humorous, clever, and a few times sad (when realizing how terrible Eve's foster mom was). Considering the subject matter, this ended up being the most light hearted In Death book I think I have read. Since this takes place over Christmas, you had Eve dealing with decorators, decorators who also got into fights, and hilariously putting antlers on Galahad. I also really loved that we got to see Roarke and Eve exchange gifts with one another. It was nice to just seem them having a really great couple moment. I do tend to skip over the later books romance scenes since they don't move me much anymore. But the earlier books do make me smile.

The ending was pretty cool and I loved how Eve identified the murder. I seriously recall the first time I read this, not having a clue who done it which to me is what makes a great mystery book. show less

It's nearly Christmas in NYC and Eve's day starts with a man dressing as Santa Claus as he dives out of a window killing himself and the innocent guy he landed on. Things get worse when Trudy Lombard ambushes her at work loudly proclaiming that she's Eve's mother.

Trudy Lombard was the first foster parent Eve had after escaping from her abusive father. She was a nasty woman who also abused Eve by bathing her in cold water, denying food, locking her in a dark room and verbally abusing her. How she's in New York with her son Bobby and Babby's new wife Zana and she wants compensation for her care of Eve.

Eve has an intense physical reaction to Trudy as she flashes back to her abused childhood but manages to sent Trudy on her way. Then Trudy show more tries to blackmail Roarke for $2 million with threats to expose Eve's files to the public. He puts on scary Roarke and sends her on her way.

When Eve and Roarke go to see her so that Eve can confront her, they find her dead in her hotel room after what looks like a physical altercation. Despite how much Eve is involved, she is given the case. This is the first time she is standing for a victim that she does not empathize with. She learns that Trudy's blackmail attempt isn't her first. She's kept illegal records of all of her fosters and is blackmailing a number of them.

As she is solving the case, she's also confronting her very difficult past and getting through it with the help of her friends and her beloved Roarke. show less

It's nearly Christmas in NYC and Eve's day starts with a man dressing as Santa Claus as he dives out of a window killing himself and the innocent guy he landed on. Things get worse when Trudy Lombard ambushes her at work loudly proclaiming that she's Eve's mother.

Trudy Lombard was the first foster parent Eve had after escaping from her abusive father. She was a nasty woman who also abused Eve by bathing her in cold water, denying food, locking her in a dark room and verbally abusing her. How she's in New York with her son Bobby and Babby's new wife Zana and she wants compensation for her care of Eve.

Eve has an intense physical reaction to Trudy as she flashes back to her abused childhood but manages to sent Trudy on her way. Then Trudy show more tries to blackmail Roarke for $2 million with threats to expose Eve's files to the public. He puts on scary Roarke and sends her on her way.

When Eve and Roarke go to see her so that Eve can confront her, they find her dead in her hotel room after what looks like a physical altercation. Despite how much Eve is involved, she is given the case. This is the first time she is standing for a victim that she does not empathize with. She learns that Trudy's blackmail attempt isn't her first. She's kept illegal records of all of her fosters and is blackmailing a number of them.

As she is solving the case, she's also confronting her very difficult past and getting through it with the help of her friends and her beloved Roarke. show less

This is book 22 in the series so obviously I enjoy them. Set in New York City in the near future where flying cars and off planet travel is routine but the gritty police work of the New York City cops is not all that different. Lieutenant Eve Dallas happens to be married to the incredibly sexy and wealthy Roarke and while this is mostly a police procedural it’s also an ongoing romance with their relationship a large part of the story. There is also plenty of comic relief with many of the recurring secondary characters who by this point in the series are old friends.

This time around Eve’s former foster mother shows up in town. Eve has no interest in reestablishing any kind of acquaintance with this woman who essentially tortured and show more abused Eve as a child. When the woman goes to Roarke and attempts to extort a large sum of money Eve decides to confront her in person after all. When she goes to the woman’s hotel room, she finds the woman dead and apparently beaten before dying from a blow to the head.

Another good story and while I figured out the guilty party fairly early it worked just well as a “how will Eve catch ‘em” as it would as a “whodunnit”.

Great series and the audio editions narrated by Susan Ericksen are excellent. show less

The holidays gifts New York Police and Security Department homicide detective Eve Dallas with a merry reveler who dived from the thirty-sixth floor of the Broadway View Hotel and crushed a pedestrian on the sidewalk below. But nothing could prepare her for the moment Trudy Lombard showed up at the station, reminding Eve of her tortured childhood.

But when Trudy is bludgeoned in her hotel room, Eve vows to stand for her just as she stands for every other victim. But Eve wasn’t the only foster child who’d suffered at her hands; finding the murderer promises to take Eve down a dark and dangerous path.

In this, the twenty-second narrative in the “In Death” series, Trudy doesn’t show up out of the goodness of her heart to see how Eve show more has fared after all these years; no, she’s on the hunt for Roarke’s money. And although this crime is a bit of a different animal for Eve, all the expected characters are in place to support her. There’s the requisite back-and-forth between Eve and Peabody [seriously, could there ever be an “In Death” book without this?]. Eve and Roarke continue to grow in their marriage [despite The Fight] as more backstory helps explain Eve’s life and, as always, the ever-evolving relationships between the characters readers have come to know and love are at the heart of the telling of the tale.

Astute readers may identify the culprit before Eve, but half the fun is watching Eve close in on her suspect. There’s enough backstory for readers new to the series; fans and aficionados of the series will find much to appreciate here.

Highly recommended. show less

MEMORY IN DEATH is the first book in the In Death series where I solved the murder mystery well before Eve reveals the killer. In fact, I had the killer pegged from the first introduction. I’m proud of myself and yet slightly disappointed that it wasn’t more of a challenge. Still, I enjoyed Eve’s frustrations at her lack of leads and answers.

MEMORY IN DEATH also includes Eve and Roarke’s second Christmas together, a scene that is a highlight of the book. They are such a great couple, and I love how Eve is finally getting the hang of gift-giving and the holidays.

I also appreciate how Ms. Robb references previous cases/books in the series. While I do think each book could stand on its own, these little nods to past events are show more like little presents for fans. How can you not enjoy that? show less