Celebrity in Death by J.D. Robb

Lieutenant Eve Dallas is no party girl, but she's managing to have a reasonably good time at the celebrity-packed bash celebrating The Icove Agenda, a film based on one of her famous cases. It's a little spooky seeing the actress playing her, who looks almost like her long-lost twin. Not as unsettling, though, as seeing the actress who plays Peabody drowned in the lap pool on the roof of the director's luxury building. Now she's at the center of a crime scene-and Eve is more than ready to get out of her high heels and strap on her holster and step into the role she was born to play: cop. ( Synopsis from B&N.com)

Hardcover, Penguin, 400 pages 

Celebrity in Death is the latest book in the Eve Dallas series and it is almost contemplative compared to some of the earlier books. Eve is the subject of a vid that is being made based on Nadine Furst’s book about the Icove case.  A dinner has been planned with the cast members and their real life counterparts to celebrate the near completion of the movie. As usual, Eve is grumpy about getting dressed up and having to attend a fancy social function. All of that changes when one of the actors ends up dead and Eve and Peabody have to solve the murder.

The victim, K.T. Harris, was disliked by everyone who worked with her and even had a tussle with Eve during the dinner. She was playing Peabody in the vid and her resemblance causes Eve and the rest of the NYPSD staff some moments of unease. AS they dig deeper into her life and death, they discover that K.T. had lots of secrets and was doing her best to disrupt the lives of her co-workers by various methods such as blackmail and coercion. It seems to Eve and Peabody that everyone has a motive and with the majority of the suspects being actors it is going to be difficult to really find out what happened.

This book has less of the action that earlier books had but more introspection into Eve and Roarke’s lives. Peabody and McNab have their special moments as well. Eve is moving on from the events that happened in Texas and coming to some measure of peace.  Roarke still worries about Eve but looks back on his life and realizes how much balance Eve brought to him. Their relationship just keeps getting stronger and more loving.  There are thirty four books in this series and they only cover a little over two years which adds to the continuity of Eve’s relationships both personal and work related.  The overlying theme of this book is about choices and how making a certain choice at a particular time has caused events to happen in each of the lives of the characters in the book. This is also the means that Eve uses to finally solve the murder-looking at choices made and how that person’s life was affected by them. It all ties together and makes this a satisfying addition to the series