Naked in Death

In Death, Book 1

By: J. D. Robb

Narrated by: Susan Ericksen

Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

THE FIRST NOVEL IN THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING IN DEATH SERIES

It is 2058, New York City. Technology now completely rules the world, but for New York Detective Eve Dallas, one irresistible impulse still rules the heart: passion...

Eve Dallas is a New York police lieutenant hunting for a ruthless killer. In over ten years on the force, she’s seen it all - and knows her survival depends on her instincts. And she’s going against every warning telling her not to get involved with Roarke, an Irish billionaire - and a suspect in Eve’s murder investigation. But passion and seduction have rules of their own, and it’s up to Eve to take a chance in the arms of a man she knows nothing about - except the addictive hunger of needing his touch.

Crack another case with Eve Dallas.

©1995 by Nora Roberts. (P)2004 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Feels very 90s. Excellent world building though.

This makes for a very less then average romance book and a very average murder mystery.

I found the romance to be unbelievable with not enough character building or realistic scenerio to get me to buy into it. It definetly feels nearly entirely based on physical attraction as neither of the two characters really give off a whole lot of depth with eachother when with eachother. In fact Roarke comes off as unlikable and our MC is just plain abrasive and doing her job. Roarke just does absolutely the bare minimum to be attractive. It's completely lame and maybe telling for the time in this book. This book was written in the 90s where I guess some of these romance trends were more plentiful. Rich guy doing the bare minimum and just being rich attracts a middle class woman. He gets this woman rare coffee and suddenly we are supposed to be into him? It's a nice gesture but she does absolutely nothing to deserve it. It's so strange and felt like a approach that did not age well to keep up with modern standards to what would spark a romance. I didn't find him mysterious either as not a whole lot of time was ever spent on building up his character to even give off that mysterious stranger romance plot vibe.

The female lead is a amazing at first as she initially comes off as determined, hard working, independent, strong. Unfortunately I ended up finding her overworked and typical sleepless detective character to be a bit overdone. Also her interactions with Roarke really dampered my opinion of her but again this may just be because of when the book was written and these character trends were more normalized. For example there is a scene where Roarke breaks in to her place and she just takes it way too casual to be believable. This guy's a complete stranger and barely any relationship building occurred between them enough to make that anywhere near appropriate. She gives off these badass vibes but then just shrugs that off when she is so supposedly suspicious of him being a killer. Absolutely had trouble suspending disbelief to get into some of these character inconsistencies. Also Roarke is patronizing to her and he should have absolutely not have gotten away with any of the stuff he keeps saying to her. If her character was consistent she would have roughed him up considerably instead of sparking a romantic interest. Gross.

This book would have benefited significantly by just dropping this romance sub plot. It really did mess with the pacing issues and stretched this out longer then it needed to be.

I don't understand why so much of this book tried to focus on this misdirect towards Roarke. I could see what the book was trying to do a mile away. It felt so bland because you just know right away based on how 'obvious' the clues were trying to be in pointing out Roarke that it definitely wasn't Roarke. It was somewhat juvenile feeling with how this mystery expected to get any reaction out of all this misdirect because it was painful in how obvious it was that it wasn't him and after a certain point it felt like beating a dead horse.

The mystery plot was actually somewhat interesting but poorly paced. I found too long of stretches of this book felt distracted or doing busy work that I just didnt see as particularly helpful but I still appreciated the world building.

I'm impressed that the world building holds up to modern standards of sci fi. That was definitely what kept me going in this book. The sci fi was subtle, believable, drew lots of parallels to modern times and felt stylish. I really liked that this world building didn't over saturate the world with sci fi and impressed with that this was written in the 90s because this felt modern and like a not so far away future. Back in the 90s sci fi I felt like would overshoot what the future would be like but this kept it very tame and more subtle.

There's a lot of gruesome moments that I felt were interesting in producing thrills and graphic. I'm new to this author but I have read a few more of her more recent books and am totally shooketh that this was written by the same person. Some of these subject matters and the writing style just feels so completly different in comparison to her more recent works I read. I find it so cool that a human can be so flexible with their writing style and being able to bend enough to write such drastically different genres of books.

I think the author does great world building and scenes when I've read her books. Only downside I noted was a trend is I'm just not that interested in the romance tie ins. I must be avoiding the solely romance focused books but her books where the romance is a side plot, in favor of focusing on drama and world, i find the romance consistently unbelievable and tacked on.

I enjoyed this book in a mild way. I didn't love it but I appreciate the consistent great worlds the author manages to build and some of the plot despite pacing issues. Despite not liking this a whole lot, I'm actually more inspired to pick more books up by this author because I just find this fascinating what she's able to create and i want to know more.

A must listen series

A great start to an addicting series. I always look forward to the next installment. Audible 20 Review Sweepstakes Entry

Wonderful

Love the book read it long ago but decided to get on audiobook book too. Really enjoyed performance.

Futuristic

This series of books is set into the future and I agree with the other reviewers who complained that Audible should state this. After realizing that the story was set in the future I enjoyed the plot and will be downloading the second book in the series to hear more of Eve's and Roark's adventures.

Loved the narrator

I really loved the narrators use of accents - they made the story quite interesting.
I have since listened to another book with a different narrator and have not enjoyed this half as much!

Not what I thought

Susan Ericksen does a decent job with this mediocre book. Like others I didn't realize this was a Nora Roberts book in disguise. Too much romance for a detective novel IMO.

Futuristic

First book of the "In Death" series...it took some imagination to start the book. Enjoyed the narrator. Overall, Nora/Robb has hit another home run.

Highly recommended

I have ignored this series for years and finally decided to do a test listen to the first book. WOW! I loved it. Like many of the other reviewers, I look forward to getting to know the characters much better over the rest of the series.

A great first story in a long line of great stories!

I started reading the series in its middle. It was nice to see how the characters started. This was a good story with great character background. A good guilty pleasure read! I plan on reading them all!

love this series!

I have read most of the books but have not finished them, so happy i can finally get to finish them!