Book Review: Seduction in Death by JD Robb
Rating: 3.5 stars
Review: Eve Dallas returns for more case-solving of a crime that disturbs her more than usual: young women are being "sexed to death"---wined and wooed and then drug with a lethal cocktail of substances that make them so wild in bed that they literally overload their systems and die. When more than one woman dies this way, Dallas becomes enraged at the thought that someone is using these women so brutally. What puzzles her, though, are the slight differences in the discovered scenes, differences that make it seem like more than one person is involved in such evil activities.
This is another sexy and gritty and sometimes funny Eve Dallas adventure and while there are some plotlines in this series that I enjoy more than others, I am never disappointed by the entertainment. I enjoy the relationships between Eve and the people that she has made into her family, and even the seedier elements are fun to peek into in the way that crime-drama shows are fun to watch.
What's not so fun is when real news stories prove that the imagination of fiction writers is rooted in reality. A couple of weeks ago I read a story about a college fraternity that was banned because of the discovery of a color-coded system they were using to drug the drinks of the girls that attended their parties, and it was a reminder that date rape is very common. When sex becomes more about dominance and winning than it does about mutual agreement and enjoyment, the lines get crossed in ways that seem unthinkable.
This was my second reading of this volume in the In Death series, and I like that I can be both entertained by a story and characters while also made to think about the broader picture that such plotlines present. I'm not sure what can be done to help prevent such crimes, but it's clear from the real-life story that improvement is needed.