I’ll always take a review from Kevin Tipple, especially when he reviews a book by one of my favorite authors, J.D. Robb. I’m reading for Library Journal, but I’m also reading a book for review here. That one comes out March 5, so I’d like to finish it. Thank you, Kevin, for giving me the gift of time.

Calculated in Death

It is mid November 2060 as Calculated in Death begins and Lieutenant
Eve Dallas is once again standing over a body. It is after 2 in the morning
on a November night just before Thanksgiving. Dallas and Detective
Peabody have been summoned to a certain short stairway that leads to a
lower-level apartment. The female body is tucked down in the stairway
where it can’t be seen. The lower-level apartment is vacant and being
rehabbed.

The unit belongs to a man by the name of Bradley Whitestone. He and his
date for the evening, Alva Moonie, had been out for dinner, had a few
drinks at the bar, and Whitestone had brought her by so that she could see
the apartment. They never made it inside as they found the dead woman
first.

The deceased is 46-year-old Marta Dickenson who worked for an
accounting firm located eight blocks away. The place where the body was
found may or may not have been on the route to her home. It strikes both
Peabody and Dallas that she did not die by fall. She is also tucked away in
a corner making it even harder to see her. Why would a mugger care?

As it turns out Whitestone is one of three partners in a financial consulting
company known as The WIN Group. Whitestone, Ingersol, and Newton,.
own the entire building and quite a few other properties. They are not at
Roarke’s level of wealth, but then again, very few are and they are doing
pretty well in their own right.

Whitestone owns the entire lower unit and intends to live in that unit with
The WIN Group taking over the first and second floors of the building. It
isn’t long before Dallas and Peabody are in the unit and find blood. Testing

soon confirms it came from Marta Dickenson. The vacant unit was the
actual murder scene before she was dumped outside on the stairwell.

As Dallas starts digging into Dickenson’s employer as well as The WIN
Group, the killings continue. Somebody isn’t going to stop until Dallas,
Peabody, and the team put an end to it.

Billed as the 36th book in the series, Calculated in Death, is another fast
and engaging read. Part romance and part police procedural one knows
their will one head hopping pov, abrupt scene shifts, and all the usual
quibbles. One also knows that soon none of that will matter as the
engaging story pulls one along at a rapid pace.

My reading copy came by way of the Libby/Overdrive app and the Dallas
Public Library System.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2024