History YMMV / InDeath

** [[spoiler: Eve's mother]] is hinted to be this a few times throughout the series, and is fully revealed to be this in ''New York To Dallas''. [[spoiler: For starters, Stella is apparently not her real name. In fact, she has also gone by the names Sister Suzan, Sarajo Whitehead, and Sylvia Prentiss. She may not even have a name. She is a drug addict and engaged in prostitution. She also boosted cars, and ran all sorts of cons. She had consensual rough sex with a guy and pretended to be raped so she could get close to one rape counselor and eventually kidnap her. She partnered up with Richard Troy and had Eve Dallas just so she can get money. She stole Troy's money and ran off, knowing what Troy was going to do to Eve and considered Eve worthless, detestable and not worth remembering. She partnered up with pedophile and CompleteMonster Isaac [=McQueen=] to kidnap people and try to help Isaac get revenge on Dallas. She thought she would get loads of money, and she actually loved Isaac. She hates everybody and everything, and she slashed the tires of a man's car just because his wife made a comment about the illegal drugs she takes. She has no qualms about teaming up with pedophiles, and would apparently watch a rape without blinking. When she got caught and restrained, she broke out and killed a cop without a second thought. She apparently has no FreudianExcuse for her behaviour, and it could be that she was always like this to begin with. Really, her death at Isaac's hands was no more than her well-deserved comeuppance]].

** Lots of them, but especially [[spoiler: Richard Troy, Eve's father]].

** Generally every time someone talks about the constitutional right to own a gun. Characters who talk about how other people consider it a basic right were probably intended to come off in a tone of "How quaint", but... well, plenty of people ''do''. It also sort of hurts the book's repeated [[InformedAbility statements]] that murders are very rare since guns were outlawed, since Eve has a long history of murder investigations under her belt... including multiple ones involving guns. The book basically acknowledges, seemingly without meaning to, that all the revoking of the second amendment did was make guns exclusive to either the extremely rich or extremely criminal, and force everyone else to kill with methods such as knives and poison.
** The author later tries to address the earlier "oops" of guns being illegal but murder still happening constantly by having Eve protest that, among other things, it's completely eliminated school shootings. Apparently no one informed her that in reality, in countries where such laws already exist, there are still often school ''stabbings''. The case is further undermined by Roberts' having Eve's enemies often armed with homemade blasters to ramp up the action... apparently you can make one of ''those'' with equipment from Radio Shack.

** Considering you can make homemade guns (if not exactly the most safe) from stuff lying around the house, that particular bit is not really that much of a stretch.

Before you add entries to CompleteMonster, you should check out [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=6vic3f9h1cy5qivsenw8llok&page=1 this thread]], which defines the criteria necessary to qualify a character as a CM. Also, consider the context of the series, which is detective, mystery and police procedural. Almost every antagonist is, at bare minimum, a murderer or an accomplice to it. Murder is a heinous crime, but you have to consider what it would take to make the murder stand out in terms of heinousness.

Before you add entries to CompleteMonster, you should check out [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=6vic3f9h1cy5qivsenw8llok&page=1 this thread]], which defines the criteria necessary to qualify a character as a CM. Also, consider the context of the series, which is detective, mystery and police procedural. Every antagonist is, at bare minimum, a murderer or an accomplice to it. Murder is a heinous crime, but you have to consider what it would take to make the murder stand out in terms of heinousness.

** Roarke has come to see that Eve has a point, too.

* {{Dystopia}}:
** Sure, the characters think it's okay, and there's all sorts of space travel and VR and autochefs yay. But then you actually start gathering stuff together. Like the fact that someone's taken white-out to the Bill of Rights. That real meat, coffee, tobacco, and other such things are so rare and expensive that some people go years without ever tasting them. That the environmental movement has grown so powerful that there are Green Cops who come around to hassle you if you're not being environmentally conscious enough. '''All''' your activities online are monitored at all times by the forces of [=CompuGuard=]. If Eve didn't rattle on about warrants and the "revised" Miranda (and get around the first half the time), you'd immediately start wondering if her world wasn't a low-level fascist state.
** Then, what's not a Dystopia borders on being a MarySueTopia. Women are paid to be mothers if they choose to stay home with their children, and people can retire quite young (the book is vague... late fifties, sixty at the latest?) and live quite comfortable lives on their default retirement package... keep in mind people live well past 100 in the setting, so it's not all that unreasonable to think someone could live on their social security anywhere from two to ''four'' times as long as they worked. Where all the money for this comes from without taxes being so high that everyone just gets a living allowance from the government is never explained.

* ProtagonistCenteredMorality:
** Some of the later books seem to have begun wandering into this area. The idea that justice may be more important than the law isn't too bad itself... but Eve always seems to be the judge of what's justice. Past book thirty or so, she goes from bending the law when it's absolutely necessary to breaking it at will. If she weren't generally presented as unfailingly right, it would almost look like a case of JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope.
** Oh...let's be honest. This trope has been present since the very first book of this series. For Eve, Roarke is this trope. ''Vengeance In Death'' had Eve finding out about some very serious crimes, however justified, committed by her husband. She had to choose between the law or her husband. Take a wild guess on which one she picked. Then there was ''Creation In Death'', which had Eve finding out from the killer that he prepared documents a long time ago that will legally allow him to commit suicide. [[spoiler: She has Roarke erase the documents, and states quite clearly to him that she is crossing the line]]. Of course, the book demonstrated that the killer was a CompleteMonster, so Eve's actions could be considered a CrowningMomentOfAwesome and not a MoralEventHorizon. If it is any consolation, Eve discusses her actions with Roarke in ''Salvation In Death''.

* CompleteMonster - Lots of them, but especially [[spoiler: Richard Troy, Eve's father]].

* {{Dystopia}} - Sure, the characters think it's okay, and there's all sorts of space travel and VR and autochefs yay. But then you actually start gathering stuff together. Like the fact that someone's taken white-out to the Bill of Rights. That real meat, coffee, tobacco, and other such things are so rare and expensive that some people go years without ever tasting them. That the environmental movement has grown so powerful that there are Green Cops who come around to hassle you if you're not being environmentally conscious enough. '''All''' your activities online are monitored at all times by the forces of [=CompuGuard=]. If Eve didn't rattle on about warrants and the "revised" Miranda (and get around the first half the time), you'd immediately start wondering if her world wasn't a low-level fascist state.

** JerkSue - Eve is rude, confrontational, antisocial, and has rage issues. She admits to delighting in upsetting people and making them hurt or angry, and using her position to do so... of course, [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality anyone who did the same thing to someone she cared about would be first on her Shit List]]. Threatening her friends and loved ones with bodily harm and humiliation is standard, and in-universe considered part of her charm. Any time she interacts with someone she knows well there's at least a fifty-fifty chance she's going to insult them deeply. And... well, honestly, this is longer than necessary already, you get the idea. With that said, ''New York To Dallas'' and stories after that have Eve beginning to realize that her {{Jerkass}} tendencies come from her biological mother, and that she may decide to tone them down a little, if only to act a little less like her mother.

* ProtagonistCenteredMorality - Some of the later books seem to have begun wandering into this area. The idea that justice may be more important than the law isn't too bad itself... but Eve always seems to be the judge of what's justice. Past book thirty or so, she goes from bending the law when it's absolutely necessary to breaking it at will. If she weren't generally presented as unfailingly right, it would almost look like a case of JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope.

* StrawmanHasAPoint - Generally every time someone talks about the constitutional right to own a gun. Characters who talk about how other people consider it a basic right were probably intended to come off in a tone of "How quaint", but... well, plenty of people ''do''. It also sort of hurts the book's repeated [[InformedAbility statements]] that murders are very rare since guns were outlawed, since Eve has a long history of murder investigations under her belt... including multiple ones involving guns. The book basically acknowledges, seemingly without meaning to, that all the revoking of the second amendment did was make guns exclusive to either the extremely rich or extremely criminal, and force everyone else to kill with methods such as knives and poison.

* ValuesDissonance - Eve values the law as preventing total chaos. Roarke goes around it if the law is sufficiently inconvenient. It's a pretty low bar. Eve has come to see his point, reluctantly.

* {{DidNotDoTheResearch}} - This overlaps with the below. Robb is pretty good about noting in the setting when laws were actually changed, such as gun laws, 'morality' laws, and so on. So it's quite glaring when Eve acts like she can take suspects to the precint without arresting them and 'charge them with Obstruction of Justice' if they don't come in or talk. None of which are actually viable in the United States. Sure, this could have changed as well, but unlike the others, there's no lampshade hanging of this. It reads more like Roberts has no clue about the law for arrests and questioning.

* MarySuetopia: Parts of New York come off as this. But that's got nothing on the parts of Dallas, Texas that Eve goes to in ''New York To Dallas''. Those parts are so...perfect, sweet and squeaky-clean that Eve finds them a little creepy. It seems to serve the purpose of contrasting and highlighting just how vile, unnatural, monstrous, and disgusting Sylvia Prentiss and Isaac [=McQueen=] really are!

** JerkSue - Eve is rude, confrontational, antisocial, and has rage issues. She admits to delighting in upsetting people and making them hurt or angry, and using her position to do so... of course, [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality anyone who did the same thing to someone she cared about would be first on her Shit List]]. Threatening her friends and loved ones with bodily harm and humiliation is standard, and in-universe considered part of her charm. Any time she interacts with someone she knows well there's at least a fifty-fifty chance she's going to insult them deeply. And... well, honestly, this is longer than necessary already, you get the idea.

* PuritySue: Troy Trueheart is this, so very much! His purity had a LampshadeHanging put onto it more than once. In fact, ''Portrait In Death'' had a guy murdering [[PuritySue PuritySues]] because he truly believed that by doing this, he would absorb the light of their pure souls into himself and never die, as well as show everyone else that they can avoid dying if they did this. Troy Trueheart almost ended up as one of his victims, in case you were wondering.

* PuritySue: Troy Trueheart is this, so very much! His purity had a LampshadeHanging put onto it more than once. In fact, ''Portrait In Death'' had a guy murdering PuritySues because he truly believed that by doing this, he would absorb the light of their pure souls into himself and never die, as well as show everyone else that they can avoid dying if they did this. Troy Trueheart almost ended up as one of his victims, in case you were wondering.

* MarySue - Eve. Even if you don't agree that she is in execution, tell someone you know that you're reading a series about a female cop in the future who's pretty much the best police officer in the city, who constantly has bad guys work their entire plans around challenging themselves against her, and who is married to a drop-dead gorgeous guy who's the richest man in the universe. If the look on their face doesn't prompt you to want to say "It's BetterThanItSounds", they probably have some worse GuiltyPleasure.

** [[spoiler: Eve's mother]] is hinted to be this a few times throughout the series, and is fully revealed to be this in ''New York To Dallas''. [[spoiler: For starters, Stella is apparently not her real name. In fact, she has also gone by the names Sister Suzan, Sarajo Whitehead, and Sylvia Prentiss. She may not even have a name. She is a drug addict and engaged in prostitution. She also boosted cars, and ran all sorts of cons. She had consensual rough sex with a guy and pretended to be raped so she could get close to one rape counselor and eventually kidnap her. She partnered up with Richard Troy and had Eve Dallas just so she can get money. She stole Troy's money and ran off, knowing what Troy was going to do to Eve and considered Eve worthless, detestable and not worth remembering. She partnered up with pedophile and CompleteMonster Isaac [=McQueen=] to kidnap people and try to help Isaac get revenge on Dallas. She thought she would get loads of money, and she actually loved Isaac. She hates everybody and everything, and she slashed the tires of a man's car just because his wife made a comment about the illegal drugs she takes. She has no qualms about teaming up with pedophiles, and would apparently watch a rape without blinking. When she got caught and restrained, she broke out and killed a cop without a second thought. Really, her death at Isaac's hands was no more than her well-deserved comeuppance]].

* ValuesDissonance - Eve values the law as preventing total chaos. Roarke goes around it if the law is sufficiently inconvenient. It's a pretty low bar. Eve has come to see his point, reluctantly.

A list of Tropes that fall under YMMV for InDeath, along with the natter that came with them.

* Squick - Eve and Roarke are examining the apartment of a sleazy murder victim (who they also discover to be a date rapist). In the process, Roarke remarks on (and handles) some [[TakeOurWordForIt vaguely defined]] but kinky sex toy. And then steals it, presumably to use on Eve later. Second hand sex toy, already ''very'' ew... second hand sex toy belonging to a rapist? '''Ugh'''.

** ValuesDissonance - Eve values the law as preventing total chaos. Roarke goes around it if the law is sufficiently inconvenient. It's a pretty low bar. Eve has come to see his point, reluctantly.

* CharacterAlignment
** ChaoticGood - Roarke and Eve (The former previously ChaoticNeutral and the latter previously LawfulGood). Also Nadine.
** LawfulGood - Jack Whitney, Chief Tibble.