In death series by J. D. Robb

In Death

3/5. Nora Roberts writes future romantic suspense novels about a NYC cop with a tragic past who solves crime with the aid of her billionaire computer genius husband, like you do.

But wait, you may be starting to ask. Surely you aren't talking about this entire series, right? Doesn't it have, like, fifty novels in it by now? Surely….?

Listen.

…Listen.

It's forty nine novels, okay.

…And nine novellas.

Here's what happened. There I was, seven months into an increasingly complicated pregnancy*, and I cleverly thought hey, you know, I'm going to want something to read just before and after delivering. Something where I'm low-grade invested and can just flip to the next book without any real emotional labor. The book series equivalent of a five million word fanfic. So I grabbed a few of these books, prompted by the ladies of the Worst Best Sellers podcast, and figured I'd try them out and cue up more when the time came. (I'd read a few of these some years ago, but I was far less fluent in romance then and suspected they may hit the spot now)

…

And now my due date is in four days and I've read 49 novels and 9 novellas. My plan has entirely failed. Or was entirely successful?

Anyway. These books. They're about a tough lady cop who is basically half feral at the beginning, and who accidentally builds a vibrant community of friends and colleagues around herself, and who occasionally notices this to her frustrated bafflement. She's basically like who the fuck decided to like all these people? Ugh. I kinda dig her.

These books are also about two very intense, traumatized people who fall in love fast, before they even fall in like, in some ways. And how they fling themselves into marriage, then have to do a lot of hard work to figure it out. I'm not the most widely-read romance reader, but I can't think of another example of a series which gives so much time to developing an established relationship, which is totally my jam but which is not the jam of the industry, generally.

There are a lot of ridic things about these books – the billionaire thing, and the way she orgasms if he so much as breathes on her. And that frustrating thing where a writer is sort of coy about sex – lots of metaphors and talking around body parts – which contrasts sharply with the florid, explicit passages about violence. Oh, and I have to warn for one of the secondary relationships, which is supposed to be fun but which is basically just workplace sexual harassment and self-directed fat-shaming.

However, you gotta respect Nora Roberts. Not just for putting out books like a freaking machine, but for co-writing a book with herself. For real – one of the books in this series is half traditional modern romance by Nora Roberts, and half romantic suspense set fifty years later by J.D. Robb. Like, you keep on living your best life, Nora.

Anyway. Someone could write a substantial paper on the visions of the future contained in this series. She started it in the 90's when the 2060's were much farther away; her vision of the future is partly hopeful (salaries for stay at home parents, gun ban, legalized and regulated sex work) and part grim (violence never changes, and sexism doesn't really either). There's something thin about the scifi elements here – they have that shiny foil wrapping quality – but there's a surprising amount to think about.

Look, it's been a hard few months. And I'm about to push this baby out and I am out of books.

Content notes: Graphic recollections of rape, depictions of murder of all sorts, violence, etc.

*Baby is fine. I am the object of much dubiousness.