3.5 stars
Spoiler warning! This is book 29 in the series, it’s not necessarily the best place to start.
Eve Dallas has a couple of days off due to a national holiday and is planning on spending it with her gajillionaire husband Roarke. But murder doesn’t take days off, and when Eve is specifically requested to lead a case, she neither can nor wants to refuse. A newly promoted police captain whom Eve has worked with in the past returned home from a weekend away with his wife to find their teenage daughter tied up, sexually violated, and brutally murdered in her own bed. The crime is an especially gruesome one, and the abuse and violence cannot help but remind Eve of her own dark past.
The security at the captain’s house was state of the art, and his daughter, while innocent in many ways, was also the daughter of a cop, so didn’t trust easily. She wouldn’t have let a stranger into the house, yet as far as her parents knew, she didn’t have a boyfriend and would never have arranged to have a party or similar while they were away. It’s not an easy thing to track down a murder suspect, let alone figure out the motive for such a gruesome crime. After another young woman, a realtor is found similarly murdered in an apartment she was showing to a potential buyer, the clues start to add up, and while the murderer might think he’s clever and untraceable, Eve Dallas and her team aren’t going to rest until they track him down and deliver justice to the grieving families.
There’s also a subplot with Eve’s friend Louise getting married and her being completely puzzled by the many duties she’s supposed to perform as the matron of honour. Thankfully, she has the trusty Peabody to assist her, both with professional duties and to navigate tricky social situations she doesn’t entirely understand.
The rest can be found here