New York to Dallas-J.D. Robb

New York to Dallas
J.D. Robb
Putnam, Sep 13 2011, $27.95
ISBN: 9780399157783

Twelve years ago when current police Lieutenant Eve Dallas was a rookie, she had the instincts of a veteran; one of her feelings impressed upon her was that the man trying to leave a crime scene was the perp. She makes her first collar as predatory Isaac McQueen received life imprisonment for his monstrous abductions of the young.

In the present she sees McQueen in her peripheral vision as he just escaped from Rikers and holds a woman hostage. Eve goes to the apartment where she took the psychopath down; the pedophile torturer, rapist killer plans to take her down this time. The clues lead to Dallas where Eve has bad memories from when she lived there as a child. McQueen kidnaps a young girl and a woman; both he hostage during that first encounter when Eve caught him. Eve with the help of Roarke seek the monster in Dallas and she also meets a woman who looks familiar to her only her mind draws a blank about her identity For the first time since they met, Roarke fears for his wife’s sanity as her past and present crash in Texas.

J.D. Robb refreshes her Eve Dallas futuristic police procedural by having the “… In Death” heroine temporarily relocate to the city she took her surname from, which forces her to use a different crew in support of her; hence the first book without the title prepositional phrase. The heroine struggles with this case because of the déjà vu of her salad days as well as round two with pure evil. As Roarke worries that his beloved’s mind is snapping under pressure, series fans will appreciate Thomas Wolfe’s assertion “You can’t go home.”

Harriet Klausner