I’m up to R in my alphabetical challenge to read a book by a new author beginning with each letter of the alphabet this year. I turned down several good candidates for R authors to read this. Never mind - nothing stopping me reading the other R books I had my eye on. I decided to give this a whirl as I’ve been ignoring the ever growing JD Robb shelf in the middle of every bookshop’s crime section for years now. This seemed like a good opportunity to see if my feeling that these books weren’t something I’d really enjoy was right or not.

I expected romance with my crime, as Robb also writes romances as Nora Roberts, and hoped it would be okay, as well as science fiction which I thought would probably be awful. Science fiction wise - yes, apparently it’s 2058 but it feels like 1995 with extra voice controls, off planet living, a US gun ban and flying cars - about what I expected but then I’m never happy with science fiction. Romance - I was expecting this aspect of the story to be passable but all I can really say for it is that it could have been worse. Crimewise it wasn’t a bad story at all and I don’t think it pulled any “oh but we can do this in the future” sci-fi deus ex machina tricks. I quite took to Eve, the central detective, as a character. But no, overall it’s definitely not my kind of thing and I won’t be reading any further in the series.