new york to dallas

new york to dallas
jd robb (aka) nora roberts
fiction/futuristic/detective/suspense/romance
putnam adult
published 2011

From Shelfari: 

Twelve years ago, Eve Dallas was just a rookie NY cop when her instincts led her to the apartment of Isaac McQueen, a man she discovered to be a sick murderer and pedophile, who was keeping young girls in cages.  Now a homicide Lieutenant, Eve is one of the most distinguished officers in the city - and then she learns that McQueen has escaped from jail. Bent on revenge against Eve, and with a need to punish more 'bad girls', McQueen heads to Dallas, Texas - the place where Eve was found as a child. The place where she killed her own abusive monster when she was only eight years old. With Eve and Roarke in pursuit of McQueen, everything is on the line and secrets from Eve's past are about to be shockingly revealed.

**********spoilers**********

This one was both a relief and an eye roller for me.  A relief because I'm hoping from here on out there won't be this shadow of Eve's childhood hanging over the books.  

We all know that Eve was brutally raped, beaten, starved and routinely tortured by her own father until she killed him when she was eight.  We knew that she had no name and we knew that she made something of herself afterwards despite having all the odds stacked against her.  The one thing we didn't know was what happened to her mother.  She knew that her mother left, left her with that monster.  We also knew that she had fleeting memories of a woman who exuded hate towards her, beat her just like her father did.  But we didn't know what had become of her.

Now we do.  She moved on and was still a horrible human being.  And she teamed up with Isaac McQueen somewhere along the way.  To me, it was just a little too easy.  Eve and her team assumed that McQueen knew what happened to her in Dallas, Texas and that's why he brought the hunt from New York to Dallas, but they don't know for sure and he never talks about it.  It would have been interesting if he knew and sought out Eve's mother to partner up with, but of course even that would be a stretch.  I felt like it was a little too easy for her to find her mother after all these years, by coincidence.

That being said, this was still a good book.  Still follows the pattern and still delivers a nail biting (though maybe a little predictable), sexy, dark story.  Now I'm just waiting for the book where she gets preggers!