In Death 55: Echoes In Death

Title: In Death 55: Echoes In Death

Author: J. D. Robb

Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Police Procedural, Series

Time: 3.4 hours

Rating: 10 out of 10

here's a short description of the book in goodreads.

I debated whether I'd read back to back the 2 In Death Series book I recently got.  But then I thought of putting a historical romance in between to ease me back into the world of Dallas.

This particular book in the series didn't immediately reveal who the killer is.  Robb does that sometimes in this series.  We get to find out who the killer is more or less the same time Eve does.  Actually she figured it out before I did.  I thought Kyle was just concerned with a touch of being nosy.  I figured he was just like that coz the author is prolly using him to lead to a big break in the case.  Didn't realize he was the case.

I also didn't anticipate the last plot twist.  I always figured that the 15-minute lag time was just something they would use to tie the crime to the killer with.  Well, it did.. just not the killer I had in mind.

How Does It End?

WARNING!!! SPOILERS AHEAD!!  READ THIS TO UNDERSTAND THIS PART OF THE POST.

Book starts with a well respected surgeon being killed while the trophy wife number 2 seemed to barely survive from what seems to be a home invasion with assault & sexual assault.  Killer has this monster mask theatrical make up deal.  A search in like crime yields that the killer has done this twice before but only now did it escalate to murder.  They consult with the SVU Detectives who handled those two cases but the killer strikes again while they are trying to eliminate suspects and follow leads.  But this time, both the hubby and wife are killed.  He is definitely escalating.  They figured it must be someone with mommy issues with heavy dose of jealousy on the daddy.  Eve somehow connects that it was Kyle, the cousin slash bestfriend of Neville from victims number 1.  He apparently had a huge crush on Neville's mom who also happens to be his mom's sister.  Yep, making her his aunt.  He practically grew up with Neville.  At the ripe old age of 15, he gave her a grown up ring to show his feelings for her.  Of course, she didn't accept it, telling him he's just confused.  He waited until he was 21 to try his luck again and asked her to meet him for dinner.  He kissed her, she slapped him and left.  He then becomes some sexual predator who raped girls that looked like his aunt.  Parents paid them off so no record of those.  But one day, he met Rosa, a stunning woman who also looks like the aunt.  But she chose the cousin Neville over him.. In fact, she married Neville.  This second round (or is it technically the third?) of rejection plus the fact she ended up with the son of his obsession triggered the whole thing.

The last plot twist in the end is that that it was actually Daphne who killed her husband.  I knew the when they kept on repeating the whole 15 minute lag time in TOD, it had to have some importance in getting the killer.  Throughout the book you already know the guy was an asshole and he prolly abused the wife.  He was into BDSM but the wife was manipulated into it.  More like trapped into it.  What happened was that after Kyle left them in their pool of blood, the husband came to, and instead of calling for the police or helping Daphne, he started to attack her coz he blamed her for the whole thing.  Crazy, right? In her hazy and scared state, she grabbed a vase and bashed his head in.  But they ruled it as self defense so she wouldn't be doing jail time.