Good murder mystery; I liked the complexity of motives and of the path Eve has to take to figure out whodunit. Something in the Eve/Roarke relationship struck a false note this time, though. What's up with Roarke being so touchy about Eve interrupting his work? And it was written like this was a long-established pattern: Eve said before doing it that she'd have to pay for it and indeed Roarke was cold and angry when he responded to her knock. I'm not used to Roarke taking work so seriously; I've always liked his devil-may-care attitude to having and running his empire. It seems Robb just wanted to set up a situation where Eve had some "groveling" to do so she could get in another sex scene--bah. This series is one of the only ones in which I not only don't mind all the sex but actually think it's usually well done, but I don't like it when Robb does her characters a disservice just to get them into bed. And isn't it time Eve was a little less freaked out by "girl time" and babies?! Why isn't she growing in that respect? I'd like to see her maintain her outward response to makeovers and girl parties but mostly as a means of maintaining image while really becoming comfortable with interacting with women (these are her FRIENDS after all) and handling babies. We saw a little of that in the Christmas book (the one with the dead Santa) when she kept "picking up" very thoughtful gifts for her friends but playing it off. This book felt like a step backward in this regard.
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Just learned the new J.D. Robb book is out--thanks Goodreads. Can't wait. I read a bit of the synopsis here and am sad to learn that the southern detective dies. I would rather have seen her become a secondary (or tertiary *grin* like McNab but not as present as Peabody) character. But kudos to Robb for introducing her in advance to make her death have more of an impact on regular readers (even if that wasn't originally the plan *grin*).