In Death 54: Apprentice In Death

Title: In Death 54: Apprentice In Death

Author: J. D. Robb

Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Police Procedural, Series

Time: 4.5 hours

Rating: 10 out of 10

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

The very first book I’ve read for the year.  I got this from my most recent book haul and going for a familiar series is a nice way to start reading again after a few months of being away from books.

I am grateful at how prolific J.D. Robb is that you can always count on a book (or 3) from her each year.  I wish I am as hooked on her romance books as I am with her In Death series.  But I have found the romance books (written under Nora Roberts) as either a hit or a miss. 

As one of my favorite mystery authors and one of the book series I follow, I have nothing bad to say about this book.  Robb’s In Death Series are very quick-paced yet very detailed, engaging and quite informative.  It’s the kind of book you can’t wait to reach the last chapter but at the same time don’t want to.  This book cost me a whole afternoon of work as I just couldn’t put it down.

This particular book in the series is pretty interesting to me because the bad guy (or should it be gal?) is a girl... a fifteen year old girl.  Not your typical serial killer.  More interesting for me is that she’s a sniper.  I’ve always fancied myself to have a sniper’s focus, patience and perhaps sharp shooting skills as I’ve always hit my target when we play with toy guns.

How Does It End?

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

Dallas catches a Long Distance Serial Killer (LDSK) case when a sniper kills 3 people in an ice skating rink.  Turns out, it was retired SWAT & trained sniper & instructor Reginald Mackie, who after the death of his pregnant 2nd wife (Zoe Younger) from accident, went berserk and started offing people connected to her accident.  It would seem at first that Mackie trained his daughter, Willow, to kill people in his hit list (hence the title Apprentice in Death) because he lost his skills from hitting the booze and drugs.  But we would later on find out is that the whole thing was actually Willow’s plan as she is a raging psychopath.  She manipulated his drunk and drugged out dad to train her into honing her sniper skills by convincing him that he had to take out the people “responsible” for her stepmom’s death.  Plan was, get trained, satisfy Daddy by executing his hit list and then move on to her hit list starting with mommy dearest, half bro and stepdaddy.  Once she’s done with that, she planned to Columbine her school, American Sniper style with a body count target.  But as usual, Dallas & co. puts a stop to all that.  Thru solid police work & almost magical e-detective work, they find their hide out.  Daddy scarified himself so Willow can continue the “mission” and then lay low in Alaska.  But she was having none of that.  She offed the only person that wasn’t yet in protective custody and planned to move on with her mission.  But Dallas gets to her before she was able to.  She would be tried as an adult despite her age and was expected to live out the rest of her years in Omega.  It ends with Bella’s 1st Birthday Party.