Outside of a Dog: Kate Nepveu's Book Log

One more in the fluff catch-up, J.D. Robb's latest novel, Strangers in Death. This is a pretty straightforward one: Eve, and the reader, know whodunnit quite early, and the tension comes from whether she can figure out how and then prove it. This works quite well to propel the book along.

From a feminist standpoint, the interesting thing is how completely the setting governs one's sympathies. The character portrait Eve draws in chapter 12 could, in certain historical settings (say), approach a justification instead of being an indictment. But because of this book's setting, the little bit of grayness is saved for a different character. (Less gray than sometimes, it seemed to me, but I may have been overly sensitive to that because the book had already been extremely judgmental on the topic of monogamy.)

As a final note, the book contains a jarring and unnecessary point-of-view shift to further a subplot which, if Robb wasn't a gazillion-seller, would have been one of the darlings her editor suggested she kill. I hate it when authors do that.