J.D. Robb
128Kbps

The Eve Dallas series of near-future mysteries rolls comfortably along in this latest installment, the twenty-ninth. The series began in 1995 so the author can fairly be accused of cranking them out (she’s also published a book or two under her real name, Nora Roberts). Despite being a lesser product of the Roberts machine, the Dallas novels have a certain charm, in a mass-produced kind of way. The near-future setting (the mid-twenty-first century) is nicely realized without being too excessively detailed; the protagonist, homicide detective Dallas, is a likable and strong character, well able to support a multivolume series; and the cases—including this one, about a murder in an ancient church, the aftermath of which reveals that the victim might not have been the gentle Catholic priest his parishioners thought he was—are imaginative and suspenseful. The dialogue is a little clumsy, and the narrative passages sometimes seem a bit contrived, but there’s a reason so many Dallas novels have appeared in so short a time: they sell. So will this one.