I really enjoyed this new Eve Dallas mystery. The ending took me by surprise, but didn’t seem completely out of left field. The killer was interesting and Mary Kate was someone to root for.

The "Bad Mommy" case was interesting - like an interesting philosophical debate. Not about the murderer - he's clearly nuts and needs to be put away - but about his mother.

A young mother, an addict, unable to get her shit together and dig her way out of her life, drowning in - quite frankly - selfishness. She attempts to kill her 4-5 year old son - she puts drugs in his soda, wanting him to just go to sleep forever - before attempting to kill herself. He doesn't die because he doesn't drink enough of it to OD, and so he's found wandering the forest. Put into the foster system, etc etc. She doesn't die because at the last second she fights to live. She does, but has (very conveniently) amnesia. Actually, it's unclear how much she can't remember versus how much she - through serious willpower - refuses to allow herself to remember.

Anyway, this chick survives her suicide attempt, with her convenient amnesia, and falls in love with her rescuer ... and this kicks off a fairytale life for her. Rich husband, beautiful home, loving family ... whole new wonderful life.

And she lives it for 50+ years, not allowing herself to think of her son, cast out to be a refugee in the world. Until her husband dies and she can't forcibly keep the memories away ... she remembers everything, and tries to make amends to the son she fucked over.

Can such a thing even be possible? Is forgiveness for that even possible, I mean?

It's a gray area, for sure, but at least in this book, I think no. Getting all these chapters from her POV as she lived her lovely life, and anytime a hint of a memory would bubble up, she'd stomp it down ... no. She can't be forgiven. Throwing money at the son she abandoned after attempting to murder him ... it only succeeded in cracking open his fragile mental state. She sends him a fucking letter explaining and giving her side of it (fucking coward, just writing a letter), before killing herself dramatically, without even letting him TALK to her. And therefore, she only succeeds in ruining his life yet again, as this revelation from dear mommy breaks whatever hold he had on his mental state and he just starts killing people who look like her.

It made this a tough book. Not his end of it - look, whatever the reasoning, if you crack and start murdering people you're a bad guy and you need to be stopped - but you've got this running line of her story through it, chapters from her POV, and it just pissed me off. Fuck this lady. Fuck her perfect life, her perfect love, her perfect home and her new perfect kids. She was so disgusting to me.

How does she do it?

JD Robb has done it again! I wait patiently for each book and read slowly to savor the story. Then it's always done too soon. I will wait for the next installment & do it all over again everytime Nora Roberts as JD Robb publishes another book in the In Death series. Love her books as Nora Roberts as well but these are my favorites

Probably one of my favorites out of the more recent in the series. Some of Eve and Peabody’s comments were quite witty and made me literally laugh out loud.

Nothing like picking up a book you thought was a stand-alone and finding out that it’s book number 53 in a series

As always Dallas is riveting. A cracking plot and an unsub I never saw, hidden in plain sight. The best sort of detective story.