Forgotten In Death

Forgotten in Death by J. D. Robb (pseudonym for Nora Roberts) brings murder, romance and suspense to a well-written futuristic police procedural set in New York City during the spring of 2061. What happens when the past and the present collide?

This story starts with our protagonist, Lieutenant Eve Dallas of the NYC police department, being called to a construction site crime scene. Joined by her partner, Detective Delia Peabody, they find the body of a woman without a fixed address who kept the local cops informed of any rule violations she witnessed on the street. While working the crime scene, Eve is called away, to a nearby building site where bones decades old have been found. It turns out that the site is one Eve’s husband, Roarke, has purchased and is starting to develop.

Time spent with Eve, Roarke, and Eve’s colleagues is always entertaining. Eve is definitely a compelling and three-dimensional character. Her need to serve and protect comes through in every book, but the underlying impetus for this is best understood by reading this series in order. Due to the way Eve was raised, she often doesn’t understand commonly used phrases and this comes into play a few times in this book making her seem more real and less perfect. As always, the interactions between Eve and Roarke are enjoyable and bring a different facet of Eve’s personality to light. Many of the reoccurring police characters play significant roles in this book. However, readers also get to see a bit of their private lives.

The prose is well-written, entertaining, and engaging. This time Eve’s passion for justice and those that need help pushes the story beyond finding a single murderer, to taking down those that preyed on others. The plot is thought-provoking and tragic. While this book has some action, it is mostly a police procedural until the ending.  It is appalling in places and uplifting in others.

Robb manages to embed humor in her novels, providing some much needed levity to offset some of the more serious and grim aspects of the story. She brings strong characters, great plots, wonderful relationships, and excellent pacing to this series. Themes include murder, justice, family dynamics, domestic abuse, racism, infidelity, lies, cover-ups, and intolerance of others, as well as standing up for the innocent and the dead.

If you enjoy engaging near-future police procedurals with some romance and humor, then I recommend this series. This is the fifty-third book in the In Death Eve Dallas series and I have read all of them up to this point. Overall, it is entertaining, and over time, it is like spending time with old friends. I can’t wait to read the next book in the series.

St. Martin’s Press and J.D. Robb provided a digital ARC of this novel via NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own and are not biased in any way. Publication date is September 7, 2021.