I appear not to have logged Survivor in Death, the prior J.D. Robb novel, when it was released this winter, so will catch up on it now. This was actually a good one, I thought; an entire family has their throats cut as they sleep—except for the young daughter, Nixie, who’d snuck out of bed to get a snack and left her friend, over on a sleepover, asleep in her room. Eve Dallas finds Nixie hiding and covered in her parents’ blood, a situation that has more than a little resonance for Eve; when Nixie refuses to go with a social worker, Eve takes Nixie with her back to her home.
Besides its effects on Eve, the situation with Nixie presents Roarke with some different issues than usual, which is refreshing. It’s resolved in a way that’s a little too easy, but, to my relief, far less easy (and wrong) than it could have been. Oddly, this book isn’t being released in paperback until the end of next month, not simultaneously with the hardcover of Origin; I’ll look forward to re-reading it then if I still need to get the bad taste of Origin out of my mouth.