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A series of books by Nora Roberts (writing as J.D. Robb), featuring police detective Eve Dallas in 2058 New York City. The series has been described as Law & Order IN THE FUTURE! Despite the traumas of her past leaving her hardened and somewhat asocial, she meets, and later marries Roarke, an enigmatic Irish multi-billionaire with demons of his own. The series concerns Eve and Roarke, along with Eve's partner/best friend Peabody, and their efforts to catch the various killers, psychos, and the occasional case of science gone bad that haunt the streets of 2050s New York City.

    Books in this series 
  • Naked in Death (1995)
  • Glory in Death (1995)
  • Immortal in Death (1996)
  • Rapture in Death (1996)
  • Ceremony in Death (1997)
  • Vengeance in Death (1997)
  • Holiday in Death (1998)
  • Midnight in Death (1998). A novella.
  • Conspiracy in Death (1999)
  • Loyalty in Death (1999)
  • Witness in Death (2000)
  • Judgment in Death (2000)
  • Betrayal in Death (2001)
  • Interlude in Death (2001). A novella.
  • Seduction in Death (2001)
  • Reunion in Death (2002)
  • Purity in Death (2002)
  • Portrait in Death (2003)
  • Imitation in Death (2003)
  • Remember When (2003). Two-part novel. The first part covers a diamond robbery taking place in the 2000s and a number of murders connected to it. The second part takes place in the 2050s and has Eve Dallas investigating the decades-old case. Since a new series of murders has started.
  • Divided in Death (2004)
  • Visions in Death (2004)
  • Survivor in Death (2005)
  • Origin in Death (2005)
  • Memory in Death (2006)
  • Haunted in Death (2006). A novella.
  • Born in Death (2006)
  • Innocent in Death (2007)
  • Creation in Death (2007)
  • Eternity in Death (2007). A novella.
  • Strangers in Death (2008)
  • Salvation in Death (2008)
  • Ritual in Death (2008). A novella.
  • Promises in Death (2009)
  • Kindred in Death (2009)
  • Missing in Death (2009). A novella.
  • Fantasy in Death (2010)
  • Indulgence in Death (2010)
  • Possession in Death (2010). A novella.
  • Treachery in Death (2011)
  • New York to Dallas (2011)
  • Chaos in Death (2011). A novella.
  • Celebrity in Death (2012)
  • Delusion in Death (2012)
  • Calculated in Death (2013)
  • Thankless in Death (2013)
  • Taken in Death (2013). A novella.
  • Concealed in Death (2014)
  • Festive in Death (2014)
  • Obsession in Death (2015)
  • Devoted in Death (2015)
  • Wonderment in Death (2015). A novella.
  • Brotherhood in Death (2016)
  • Apprentice in Death (2016)
  • Echoes in Death (2017)
  • Secrets in Death (2017)
  • Dark in Death (2018)
  • Leverage in Death (2018)
  • Connections in Death (2019)
  • Vendetta in Death (2019)
  • Golden in Death (2020)
  • Shadows in Death (2020)
  • Faithless in Death (2021)
  • Forgotten in Death (2021)
  • Abandoned in Death (2022)
  • Desperation in Death (2022)
  • Encore in Death (2023)
  • Payback in Death (2023)


These books contain examples of:

  • 20 Minutes into the Future: The first book is set in 2058, with subsequent books proceeding into the early 2060s. Technology has made numerous advancements (including the ever-popular flying cars) and humans have established colonies and commercial facilities in space; prostitution has been legalized and regulated, while guns and unrecycled paper products have been banned and vegetable/soy substitutes for environmentally touchy products like meat and coffee are widespread. References are made to Urban Wars that occurred in the early 21st century and ended in 2016.
  • Absent Aliens: There is space travel in Robb's 21st century, but it's mostly background, and there's no mention of non-human life. (Aside from the villains Eve chases)
  • Absent-Minded Professor: Dennis Mira, the sweet-natured and slightly spacy husband of Eve's longtime colleague Dr. Mira, teaches at Columbia University. He's forgetful about details - "vague" and "dreamy" are recurring descriptors - but his wife notes that he is "skilled at fining down a point to its most elemental level," and she often discusses aspects of cases with him.
  • Abusive Parents:
    • In the backstory of both main characters, with the sole exception of Roarke's real mother, who died soon after he was born.
    • Also applies to Mavis's abusive mother.
    • Several criminals in the novels have been abused by their parent(s). John Blue in Visions of Death was horrifically abused by his mother which ended up breaking him, Madeline Bullock in Born in Death groomed and sexually assaulted her son for decades which warped him, among various others.
  • Accidental Misnaming: That's Lieutenant Eve Dallas to you, not "Mrs. Roarke".
  • Actually Pretty Funny: Even droids are amused when the Lieutenant uses her methods to put assholes in their place.
  • Addled Addict: People addicted to the drug Funk, most often referred to as "funky junkies," are uniformly depicted this way. The drug leaves them in a perpetually vague, befuddled state of mind with limited capacity for retaining detailed information. Combined with the tendency of the drug to also wreak havoc on one's eyesight, this makes them supremely frustrating witnesses.
  • Adjective Animal Alehouse: The Blue Squirrel, where the food and drinks are highly suspect and the live music acts tend to the scantily-clad. Mavis is employed there as a performer in the first three books, and Eve continues to use the location as a meeting place on occasion even after Mavis stops working there (though she prefers the Down and Dirty, the even seedier dive where Crack works as a bouncer, for covert meetings).
  • Affectionate Nickname: Charles Monroe calls Eve "Lieutenant Sugar," and keeps it up long after any pretense of flirtation has passed. Roarke prefers "darling Eve," and at one point programs the house computer to call her that as well, to Eve's exasperation. McNabb has "She-Body" for Peabody, and Mavis doles out excessively cute nicknames like candy. Crack has "skinny white girl" for Eve, while she calls him "Big (or Large) Black Man"
  • Agent Scully: Eve flatly does not or refuses to believe in ghosts and the supernatural, even when it's staring her straight in the face. This vexes everyone around her.
  • The Alleged Car: Eve drives a string of them which she is secretly attached to, before Roarke insists on buying her a Damage-Proof Vehicle.
  • Alpha Bitch: Sometimes victims, sometimes murderers.
  • Always Murder: Justified. Eve is a detective in the Homicide division, so she'd have little basis to investigate if murder weren't at least suspected.
  • Amicable Exes: At the beginning of "Reunion in Death", it's said that Walter C. Pettibone "maintained a reasonable friendly relationship with his ex".
  • And This Is for...: Eve has one after the fact, with the knockout being for the victim.
  • The Antichrist: David Baines Conroy in Ceremony in Death is a mass murderer who presented himself as the anti-Christ. He was caught prior to the start of the series; his case comes onto Eve's radar when it turns out that his son is involved in her current case. The son, Charles "Chas" Forte, is being set up as a suspect by the real killers.
  • Artistic License – Biology: Naked in Death perpetuates the myth made popular by Goldfinger in a crime anecdote that Feeney relates to Eve, involving a sex offender and murderer who coated his victims head to foot with red paint which suffocated them to death. "Skin's gotta breathe," Feeney explains. In reality, while it certainly wouldn't be healthy for someone to have their skin coated with paint, it wouldn't kill them - certainly not by suffocation, and the police report that Feeney was reading should have provided reasonably accurate information about cause of death. Granted, this is a lead up to a pun, so the whole thing could have been a joke.
  • Asshole Victim: There are a lot of these. Eve starts out essentially forcing herself to sympathize with them and feel for them, an attitude which lessens as the series goes on thanks to several cases in which the victims turned out to really have it coming.
    • Witness in Death has her openly admit that she couldn't feel sorry for the victim, nor truly condemn his murderer. Richard Draco is characterized right out of the gate as a petty and thoroughly unlikable prima donna who is roundly detested by everyone who knew him; scratching the surface reveals that he was also a sexual predator who routinely drugged women and filmed himself having sex with them without their knowledge or consent. Including his own daughter, who was unaware of their familial connection when she started sleeping with him. Draco, on the other hand, was not only fully aware, he began the relationship after learning the familial connection.
    • Thankless in Death has Joe Klein, aka Asshole Joe, a smarmy, snarky insurance salesman who hits on Peabody, ignores Eve's advice, and adamantly refuses to believe that one of his old buddies is an over-the-edge insane killer out to get him even when all evidence proves that he is. By the end of the book, he is kidnapped by said killer friend and tortured to the point of pissing himself. When Eve finally rescues him, he's sobbing and apologizing for not listening.
    • The initial victim in Brotherhood in Death is portrayed right off the bat as a smug, wholly self-centered politician who cares more about money than about keeping a promise made to his late grandfather and is trying to pressure his Nice Guy cousin into selling their grandparents' house against the grandfather's final wishes. The investigation eventually reveals even worse: all three of the murder victims, along with three other men, had formed a "Brotherhood" with a yearly tradition of abducting, drugging, and gang-raping young women. They'd been doing this once a year for forty-nine years, even taking video recordings, and one of the men kept a lock of each woman's hair as souvenirs. It's hard not to side with the killer once all this comes to light, and Eve herself mostly feels disgusted that only two of the six are still alive to face prosecution for their crimes (besides the murder victims, a fourth had committed suicide), while three of their victims will have to go to jail for killing them.
    • All of the victims in Vendetta in Death have manipulated and/or abused women in some respect before their deaths, it's the first victim that Eve really has problems with: he's a wealthy businessman who habitually sexually harasses the women in his offices, drugs women and rapes them, records his rapes and saves the recordings for future purposes.
  • Author Avatar: Eve to Nora Roberts, made blatant in some book covers where Nora Roberts cosplays as her own character.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: Traditional firearms have become status symbols within the setting, due to the universal ban on them (to the point that even the police can't use them) meaning that if you own one, you have the money to afford not only the gun but the collector's permit required to legally own one. On the other hand, though, due to the ban, ammunition is incredibly rare, meaning that even using a gun for self-defense is extremely costly, especially when a blaster or pocket stunner can practically be bought at your local corner store for all one's self-defense needs.
  • Back-to-Back Badasses: Eve and Roarke on at least two occasions.
  • Back for the Dead: After playing a small but significant role in Glory in Death, celebrity gossip reporter Larinda Mars goes more or less completely unmentioned for over forty novels before playing a major role in Secrets in Death - as the murder victim.
  • Bad to the Last Drop: In this future genuine coffee is an expensive luxury that only the rich can afford, most people making do with an artificially flavored substitute (and the coffee at Central is reputed to be bad even by this lowered standard). So more than anything else Roarke's wealth can buy, Eve cherishes the high-quality genuine coffee that Roarke maintains a plantation in Brazil just for his household supply. A bag of such coffee was his first gift to her.
  • Battle Butler: Summerset is normally quite prim, but he lived through the Urban Wars and has been shown fully capable of kicking ass when he has to.
  • Better the Devil You Know: As much as Roarke hated his father, he didn't trust the system to protect him "and had figured better the devil you know".
  • Big Applesauce: Both the text and some of the characters treat New York City with a reverence bordering on religion. In one book Roarke feels the need to point out to Eve that New York isn't the center of the universe, to which Eve replies that it should be. The fact that New York state exists beyond New York City is generally ignored.
  • Big Brother Instinct: Roarke tends to harbor protective instincts toward Eve's female colleagues, though they're not particularly weak. This is probably due to his deceased mother.
  • Big Damn Heroes: Eve frequently has such moments at the climax of a novel's storyline. Roarke has also done it a few times.
    • At the end of the first novel, the cat Eve brings home from a crime scene becomes this, attacking the Dragon-in-Chief trying to kill Eve in revenge, delaying his final shot long enough for Roarke to pull one too. It's why Eve names him Galahad.
  • Big Eater: Peabody is always nagging Eve to stop for food. It's subtly hinted she may also be doing this to make sure Dallas eats.
  • Berserk Button:
    • For Eve:
      • Harm a child? Not on Eve's watch! See Abusive Parents above. She also hates parents who manipulate their children, as shown in Born and Kindred.
      • Police corruption, as shown in Treachery, among others.
      • No matter how injured she is, even when a case is over Eve will still fight to avoid going to a hospital.
      • Do not insult the NYPSD to Eve's face.
    • For Roarke:
      • DO NOT HARM, INSULT, OR THREATEN EVE IN FRONT OF ROARKE. Made even scarier by the fact that many don't even know they've mashed said button until it's too late. See Tranquil Fury below.
    • For others:
      • Harm Eve and after the NYPSD makes your life a living hell, Roarke will show you new types of pain. The same applies for harming Roarke where Eve is concerned.
      • It goes either and both ways, with Eve's men taking it personally when someone threatens their Lieutenant. We see this in Treachery in Death after someone has just attacked Eve from the back, in front of other detectives.
    Eve: That was some very creative and varied use of the word fuck, Detective.
    Jacobson: Fucker. On your fucking face, you fucking shit coward. Stream my Lieutenant in the fucking back? Fuck you!
    • He then proceeds break one of the man's fingers.
    • Like most examples of this trope, if you hurt, injure or kill another cop, no matter who you are, the NYPSD will drop everything to hunt you down.
  • Best Served Cold: Prior to the series, Roarke meticulously planned and executed 7 murders across the globe, over the course of a decade. The victims earned it.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Peabody, who is good at appearing to sympathize with people, and Trueheart, who Eve says has an 'officer friendly way about him', and takes advantage of this to fool people into lowering their guard. Both contrast their senior partners who both show the tough cop image.
    • Roarke in spades. While he is a former Dublin street rat and current Fiction 500 billionaire, he is one of the most polite, friendly, and cheerful people in the series. But for the love of Christ do not piss him off if you value your life and livelihood.
  • Blackmail: A number of individuals use this in the series. Some of them even tried this on a murderer, in a blatant Too Dumb to Live maneuver. Every single one of these individuals ended up as an Asshole Victim.
    • Case in point, the victim in Memory In Death. No only is she dumb enough to try and blackmail New York's top homicide detective, who happens to be married to the richest man in the known universe and is very capable of slowly tearing her limb from limb with a cheerful smile on his face, but she was setting up for a second attempt when she was offed. It is sometimes hard to feel sorry for these people.
    • Also, after Asshole Victim extraordinaire Richard Draco is murdered in Witness in Death, someone gets the bright idea to try and blackmail the murderer. Unsurprisingly, the would-be blackmailer winds up dead.
    • The victim in Secrets in Death was a longtime blackmailer with a very long list of marks and prospective marks, making an equally long list of suspects for Eve to comb through.
  • "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: Roarke considers "banged" "a very unattractive term". He'd rather say he and Pepper Franklin "had a brief and mature relationship, which included the occasional banging".
  • Black Market Produce: Real meat and coffee are expensive luxuries that only the rich can afford. In the first novel of the series billionaire Roarke woos Dallas by giving her a present of genuine coffee from the Brazilian plantation he maintains at great expense for his own personal supply. It's so immeasurably superior to the vile sludge that usually passes for coffee (see Bad to the Last Drop) that Dallas's coffee becomes the envy of the entire Homicide division, and later in the series Police Central. Her bosses will find excuses to drop in for a cup on occasion.
  • Bland-Name Product:
    • For various things, and averted on so few occasions that you might start wondering about Product Placement (or at least Author Appeal), since Pepsi seems to be one of the only, if not the only, major brand to survive the Urban Wars.
    • There's also the various drugs like Zoner, Zeus, and Exotica, which in function and approach they're basically just Marijuana, Cocaine, and Ecstasy. Would probably be just Future Slang if the series didn't try to point out that they're actually supposed to be distinct substances. (And yet, the originals have apparently disappeared from use. No one ever tokes some weed or snorts some coke, it's always Zoner or Zeus.)
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: The killer in Concealed in Death turns out to be emotionally and mentally stunted, and as such, was not able to comprehend that his murder of the girls and hiding their bodies in the orphanage was wrong, and in an intensely twisted way believed he was helping them. Eve was a bit put-off by the whole thing, and concedes that while he cannot be blamed for his mental deficiencies, he still must be held responsible for the murders he committed—as well as holding responsible the man who knowingly covered up both the perpetrator's mental problems and the murders to prevent damage to their family's name.
  • Blunt Metaphors Trauma: Eve doesn't quite get a lot of common idioms. It seems to be a combination of a highly analytical mind and a very isolated upbringing; she tends to either get idioms wrong or modifies them into something which makes more sense to her mind, and frequently over-thinks figurative turns of phrase trying to figure out why a specific wording has come to connote a particular meaning.
  • Body Horror: At the end of Chaos in Death, it is revealed that killer was not only suffering from a split personality, but had somehow developed a method of drastically transforming his body.
  • Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: During the first time Eve receives a gift from Roarke, Mavis tries to guess what it is. Her first three guesses are: diamonds, a necklace, and a diamond necklace.
  • Brother–Sister Incest: Holiday in Death, Piper and Rudy Hoffman. A rare case of it being completely consensual; Mira points this out to Eve after Mira assesses them both.
  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: The Electronic Detectives Division (EDD) and the crime lab have significantly more relaxed standards of dress and behavior as compared to most of the rest of the NYPSD, and the cops who work in these departments tend to be fairly colorful characters. In Apprentice in Death Eve meets an EDD detective who speaks in Future Slang so impenetrable she has to have McNabb translate for her.
  • Busman's Holiday: Eve and Roarke spend the first chapter of Indulgence in Death on vacation in Ireland, visiting Roarke's maternal relatives. Naturally, a body turns up. Eve resists the trope as best she can, aware that she has no actual authority to investigate, but it's a small town that hasn't had a murder of any kind in over a decade and the investigating officer is rather out of his depth. Eve ends up doing as much of the initial crime scene work as she can legally get away with and not step on toes, and provides the local cop with point by point advice on how to proceed from there.
  • But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Grogin killed so many people on Patrick Roarke's orders he can't remember if Siobhan's brother was among them.
  • By-the-Book Cop/Cowboy Cop:
    • Eve somehow manages to be both! Peabody is a straighter example of By-the-Book Cop but not entirely.
    • Eve tries to be a By-the-Book Cop so as to not give her suspects any legal loopholes to exploit and will resort to the less legal means (often by drawing on Roarke's talents for that sort of thing) only when she has no other option. Eve respects if not outright worships the Law while recognizing that her opponents work outside it.
  • Call-Back: lots of them, especially when it comes to a Recurring Character. One of the most poignant is Richard and Sharon DeBlass, parents of the very first murder victim we see in-series; they keep in touch with Roarke afterwards, so he knows that they want to foster a child when he runs into a homeless boy who gives vital information on a case, and is in a potentially dangerous situation. It turns out so well, that Roarke does it again with Nixie Swisher of Survivor in Death.
  • Clingy Jealous Girl: An interesting and sympathetic example with Eve. Roarke can be very affectionate and flirty with female friends, but Eve's very good at distinguishing when she has a reason to be jealous (Magdelana shows up clearly angling to rekindle the relationship in Innocent in Death) and when she doesn't (Roarke gives Nadine a good luck kiss or strokes Peabody's hair after a bad scare).
  • Closet Geek: Borderline case with Roarke, who reads 'graphic novels' and knows about Iron Man, Batman and other fandoms, but still acts like a sophisticated businessman, in contrast to every other tech-savvy character who is a full out geek or nerd.
  • Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Dennis Mira, Dr. Mira's husband. Incredibly sweet and empathetic but rather spacey. Eve finds him oddly charming.
  • Cool and Unusual Punishment: In Innocent in Death, Roarke finally confronts Magdelana about her machinations... and informs her that she's going to be completely banned from every single property, business, and transportation system that he owns. Roarke owns a lot.
  • Cool Big Sis: Peabody thinks of Dallas this way, while Dallas is impressed by Mira's grace, style and poise, to the point of her mental descriptions reaching near girl-crush levels.
  • Cool Car: In Promises in Death, Roarke gives Dallas an incredibly cool car custom-designed for her, packed to the gills with awesome features... and painted like a junker, so it won't draw attention on the street or resentment from fellow cops. Eve is grateful, since she'd had to use NYPSD-issued clunkers until "Promises".
  • Cool Old Guy: Pretty much everyone who actually participated on some level in the Urban Wars Took a Level in Badass. Some of them took more than one level and retained it better. Chief Tibble, Commander Whitney, Summerset and Feeney are notable examples, while the killer in Creation In Death is a subversion, being said to avoid all the fighting and shown to be a coward in his old age.
  • Cool Old Lady: There are a few examples, but Edie Farnsworth in Thankless in Death takes the crown. A retired high school computer science teacher with no remarkable physical ability to speak of, she manages to keep her head together while being held prisoner by volatile impulse-driven murderer. She not only manages to sneak a hidden code into the false identity he forces her to code for him, one that will flag the ID with a fraud alert directed straight to Eve the moment it's used, she even manages to break his foot as a final middle finger. She doesn't make it, unfortunately, but she dies with a satisfied smile in her heart, and her incredible toughness and savvy thinking under pressure help Eve to catch the killer in time to save his next victim.
  • Cop Killer: This has happened several times, and when it does, you can bet that this a considered a Moral Event Horizon for the cops at least.
  • The Coroner: NYPSD Chief Medical Examiner Morris primarily fills the role from Rapture in Death onwards. He's characterized as classy and stylish, very thorough in his work, and very respectful and sympathetic towards the dead.
  • Creepy Child: Rayleen Straffo, in Innocent in Death.
  • Cyberpunk: In all but name. Flying cars, Future Slang, Ridiculously Human Robots, soy-everything, super computers, Fiction 500 Mega Corps, Virtual Reality...were the setting not already established to be New York, you would be forgiven for thinking Eve operated out of Niihama or Night City. The "punk" part isn't quite as traditional, given that Eve and Roarke are a police detective and megacorp owner, respectively, occupations which are often portrayed as the villains in other cyberpunk settings. That being said, however, there are Corrupt Cops and Corrupt Corporate Executives depicted in the series frequently enough to quite heavily imply that Roarke, Eve, and their immediate associates are White Sheep in an otherwise rather dystopian world.
  • Da Chief: Chief Tibble. Commander Whitney, as her direct superior, also serves as Da Chief to Eve in many respects; both of them have good working relationships with her.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: Dallas, Roarke, Dr. Mira. How they each dealt with it is a large part of their characterization, and set them on their respective paths.
  • Dartboard of Hate: In Ceremony in Death, it's revealed that, because of how bad Eve is with machines, "the guys in Maintenance shoot air darts at [her] picture".
  • Deadpan Snarker: Eve is very very cynical, and doesn't attempt to hide it.
  • Death Glare:
    • Most of the older characters have one, but the prize has to go to Roarke, as seeing it was described as "[looking] into the face of murder.". He's willing and capable of the act, but usually doesn't because there is either no point, or more common, it would upset Eve.
  • Declining Promotion: Lt. Dallas has, in the in-story span of two and a half years, solved so many spectacular cases that she's now a public celebrity, especially following the incredibly high-profile resolution of the Icove case in Origin in Death. In Thankless in Death, she was offered a captaincy but declined on the grounds that while she could be a good captain, she's more useful in the field.
  • Deconstruction: The setting reads as a deconstruction of the idea of a social utopia. "Traditional" firearms are banned, the food industry is more tightly regulated to the point that animal cruelty is virtually unheard of, welfare is better than ever, and prostitution and certain recreational drugs are legalized and regulated. On the other hand, none of this comes without cost: the regulation of the food industry and increased environmental protections mean that meats and animal products are all but entirely replaced by soy and vegetable substitutes for most people; real meat, real coffee, and real tobacco are rare and expensive luxuries, personal freedoms are more restricted and monitored, and projectile-based firearms have been antiquated and rendered obsolete anyways thanks to the invention of energy-based blasters, which can be and are just as lethal as any slugthrower when dialed up to the right settings. And even with all of this, people are still murdered by psychopaths, terrorists still blow up monuments, and there is still a dark, nasty underbelly to society where the forgotten and out-of-luck citizens waste away from the world. Basically, despite all the "progressive" changes to the world, its still the same world that it is now and nowhere near the utopia that it is supposed to be.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance:
    • 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.
    • Roarke has come to see that Eve has a point, too.
  • Demonic Possession: In Possession in Death Eve gets possessed by a dead gypsy who wants Eve to find her lost granddaughter.
  • Depraved Bisexual: Selina Cross in Ceremony in Death comes to mind. She sacrifices little children to the devil, raped countless curious onlookers in her Satanist Club, drove a girl to suicide by stalking her with robotic pets and need we mention she's a Satanic drug dealer?
  • Despair Gambit: Used in Conspiracy in Death on Eve to get her off a case. It almost works. Almost.
  • Determinator: Plenty of them, but especially Eve. She will run herself until forced to stop and rest, generally by fellow determinator Roarke.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: There is a general attitude in the series that murder is rarely a proportionate response to a situation, but even so, there are cases that stand out in how incredibly petty the murderer's reasons for ending the life of another human being turn out to be. Once again, Innocent in Death is a particularly notable example: Craig Foster was murdered painfully via ricin poisoning because he gave Rayleen Straffo an A-minus on her project instead of an A-plus or an A.
  • The Dog Bites Back: At the end of Echoes in Death, Eve confirms that the serial rapist-turned-murderer she'd just caught was not the killer of the novel's first victim. After the victim and his wife were assaulted and the wife was violently raped by the novel's main perp, the victim turned on his wife in a rage, blaming her for the assault and threatening to kill her. The long-abused woman killed her husband in self-defense.
  • Donut Mess with a Cop: Every few novels or so you can expect someone to bring a box of donuts or other baked goods into Cop Central - most often Nadine, who uses them to bribe her way into Eve's office. A feeding frenzy is inevitable, and the cop who takes care to set a donut aside for a colleague is considered a thoughtful person indeed.
  • Dr. Jerk: Dr. Anthony Strazza, the Asshole Victim in Echoes in Death, was an extremely skilled surgeon and roundly disliked by everyone who knew him. His own lawyer candidly admits to Eve that he can only think of ten days in which he liked the man, and that was when Dr. Strazza was fixing him up after a serious accident. All of this is before it comes to light that Strazza was abusing his wife.
  • The Dreaded: The departmental grapevine is apparently "more scared of [Eve] than Oberman". Eve's response:
    I like fear. It's versatile.
  • The Empath: Peabody's father and brother are this, and the former theorizes that Eve might be too.
  • Enfant Terrible:
    • Rayleen Straffo in Innocent In Death, who started her murderous career at seven.
    • By comparison, Willow Mackie in Apprentice in Death got a slightly later start, killing twenty-five people with a long-range tactical laser at the age of fifteen. She eventually reveals that the killing spree was her idea, masterminded over the course of a year, with the intent of continuing into a hundred-victim mass shooting starting at her school. Even before that, she'd threatened her stepfather, seven-year-old half-brother, and several other people on numerous occasions, not to mention killing her half-brother's puppy by breaking its neck and throwing it out a third-story window to land at the boy's feet as he came home.
  • Energy Weapon: "Blasters" are the new personal defense sidearms on the streets of New York, rendering "antique" firearms obsolete, though with firearms universally banned in the setting, you won't see many outside of collections anyways. The main advantage of blasters over firearms is their ability to adjust the lethality of their bolts (ranging from a nerve disruptor setting that has a similar effect as a stun gun with more range, to literally being able to bore a hole through your skull), and as such have all but replaced firearms in every market, from civilian to military. Laser weapons also make an appearance, essentially serving the role as the blaster's heavier cousins.
  • Engineered Public Confession: Eve pulls this off at the end of Purity in Death and Innocent in Death, though the latter was designed for one person.
  • Enmity with an Object: Eve has an irrational fear and hatred of all vending machines. If at all possible she refuses to use them directly, preferring to hand her money to someone else and have them buy the candy bar or whatever for her.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: In Judgment in Death, Roarke says Ricker "expects deceit because he's a liar himself".
  • Evil Counterpart: Renee Oberman in Treachery in Death is basically the opposite of Eve in every way but gender. Also Bix to Peabody. He's an attack dog subordinate with no independent thought, she's a true partner who complements Eve as part of a team.
  • Evil Lawyer Joke: In Ceremony in Death, Eve wonders if a "lawyer witch" can be considered redundancy.
  • Expy: Eve and Roarke bear a very strong resemblance to Mel Sutherland and Sebastian Donovan from Roberts's 1992 novella Entranced. Sutherland is a tough and prickly detective with short brown hair, like Eve, and Donovan is a wealthy and mysterious Irishman with black hair and blue eyes who Mel finds herself forced to work with on a case, like Roarke.
  • Expert Consultant: Whenever Roarke decides to help out on one of Eve's cases she always refers to him as a "civilian consultant". This is partially because as a billionaire businessman he does have useful expert knowledge, and partially because it is the most convenient thing to put on her reports.
  • Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: Several perps across the series hide their twisted natures behind charming, attractive and innocent-looking exteriors. The most textbook example is Rayleen Straffo in Innocent in Death: a pretty ten-year-old girl with curly blonde hair and violet eyes, "dewy" skin, a slightly tipped-up nose and a "rosy" mouth. She's already killed three people at the time the narration makes this description of her, starting with her own baby brother when he was two years old and she was seven.
  • Fantasy Gun Control: Of a strange sort. On one hand, all firearms have been banned in the United States outside of collector's pieces and special permits, even for police forces. On the other, however, "Blasters" have risen in popularity to fill the vacuum, meaning the streets are still as dangerous as ever.
  • Fair Cop: Trueheart is a rare male example. Even Eve mentally describes him as "hunky".
  • A Father to His Men: Dallas is a Gender Flipped example; although she's a Jerkass and rarely emotional, or maternal, she does feel protective about them and takes pride in their successes. It's reciprocated in kind. From Treachery:
    Peabody: You've got one of the crappiest offices in Central. It makes us proud.
    Dallas: Seriously?
    Peabody: You don't care about the fancy, you care about the job. And your men. Everybody knows it.
    • Punctuated in Thankless; one of the reasons why Eve passes up the opportunity to be promoted to Captain is because she did not want her men to feel like they had to climb the chain of command simply to talk to her.
  • Fiction 500: Roarke is one of the wealthiest individuals in the world, possibly the wealthiest. Eve frequently snarks about him buying whole countries; the reader may be forgiven for getting the impression that this is only kind of an exaggeration, given that any business or building Eve's investigations lead her to runs approximately a fifty-fifty chance or better of being owned by Roarke Industries or a branch thereof. And if it's not, chances are he considered buying it at one point or other. Eve eventually more or less gets used to it after a couple years of marriage, although she complains (in Innocent in Death) that his corporate policy directing all of his businesses to give her whatever information she asks for without question takes the fun out of verbally sparring with uncooperative employees.
  • Friend in the Press: Nadine Furst was a TV crime reporter whose life was saved by Detective Eve Dallas in the second book in the series. Subsequently, the two became good friends and tried to help each other professionally whenever they could without compromising her professional ethics.
  • Forgets to Eat: Eve, unless it's junk food. Roarke goes to great pains to make sure she stays fed. More subtly, so do Summerset and Peabody.
    • It apparently gets so bad that Roarke had an mini Auto-Chef installed in her car.
  • Fun Personified/Genki Girl: Mavis.
  • Future Slang: Drugs are chems, sedatives are soothers, painkillers are blockers and sneakers are skids, just to name a few. The most common expressions of approval are "mag" (possibly from "magnificent") and "iced" or variations upon it (as in "cool").
  • Gentle Giant: Leonardo, Crack when he's not angry and Detective Strong's flatmate from Treachery In Death
  • Gentleman Thief: Roarke and Summerset are both former ones, but their skill is undiminished. Roarke, at least, keeps in practice.
  • Give Me Back My Wallet: Every now and then, Eve will catch other people getting their pockets picked, and apprehend the thief. But Roarke has been shown to pick Eve's pocket without her noticing, for fun.
  • Go Through Me: When Chief Simpson threatens to demote Eve and Feeney to Traffic Detail in Naked in Death, Whitney inervenes on their favor and says Simpson will have to go through him.
  • Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: Dr. Mira in Midnight in Death is unable to understand David Palmer's villainy. Eve Dallas is similarly unable to understand her own mother in New York to Dallas.
  • Grand Romantic Gesture: Roarke has a lot of resources at his disposal and he's more than willing to use all of them to show Eve how he feels about her. Among a multitude of other examples, he has the cheap apartment that she was living in at the start of the series fully and accurately recreated within his own mansion, in order to give Eve a space in the house that she can feel comfortable in.
  • Granola Girl: Peabody was raised this way, but has mostly rejected the lifestyle. Occasionally some of her old Free Ager habits pop up, invariably to commentary from Eve.
  • Groin Attack: Roarke's tale of how he acquired his first handgun... from the guy aiming it at his head.
    Roarke: Fortunately, he was distracted by my foot in his crotch.
  • Hair-Trigger Temper:
    • Eve is pretty much an irritable dick to everyone around her. All the time. Even when she's in a good mood.
  • Happily Married:
    • Eve and Roarke, after a whirlwind courtship. Also, the Miras, the Feeneys, Mavis and Leonardo, and the Whitneys. Despite the books' subject matter, it's actually rather common among the first- and second-tier characters. More than, say, any of the Law & Order series.
    • Roberts/Robb likes this trope. A lot. Especially paired with whirlwind romances. To the point that it counts as a subversion with Peabody and McNab when their relationship takes a while to build up and isn't smooth sailing in the least.
    • There is Morris and Coltraine, who were developing a relationship across several books ... until Coltraine was murdered in Promises in Death.
  • Hero of Another Story: The other Homicide detectives, particularly Baxter and Trueheart, close their own cases and report to Eve throughout the series. This is even lampshaded in the narration, which describes them as "the leads in a buddy movie."
  • Honest Corporate Executive: Roarke is one of the wealthiest individuals in the world, with corporate interests in all kinds of sectors. He started out as a thief and a black marketeer, but by the time the series starts he's gone fully legitimate (when his Eve asks, he remarks with tongue in cheek that he almost wishes he did still have some dirty business going so that he could give it all up for her sake). He treats his employees well and is quick to put a stop to any unethical shenanigans he discovers going on at the lower levels of his companies; in later books, he founds a shelter for victims of domestic abuse and makes sure that it stays well-funded and staffed by capable, caring people.
  • Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Leonardo ("built like a redwood") and Mavis ("pixielike").
  • Human Traffickers:
    • Origin in Death has an illegal cloning program which has for decades cloned people for willing buyers. These clones are used for everything from prostitutes, soldiers, spies or even disposable cannon fodder.
    • Born In Death has a group who take in mothers and sell their babies to rich customers.
    • Faithless in Death features the Breeding Cult known as the Natural Order, run by Reverend Stanton Wilkey. The Natural Order kidnaps women and tortures them into submissive brides to be sold off to politicians and other high ranking officials.
    • Desperation in Death features the "The Pleasure Academy", which is run by Jonah K. Devereaux. The Pleasure Academy kidnaps young girls and women and indoctrinates them into sex slaves for the wealthy elite.
  • Hypocritical Heartwarming: Inverted. Eve will be a jerk to you but be a jerk to her loved ones and she will make you pay.
  • I Can't Believe a Guy Like You Would Notice Me: Eve sometimes wonders why a billionaire would love someone like her.
  • I Have Your Wife: The perps in Leverage in Death target married men who have a young child, holding the wife and child hostage to compel their victim to carry out a suicide bombing.
  • I Never Said It Was Poison: In "Seduction in Death", Evie notifies Lucias Dunwood of his grandfather's death. She later tells her colleagues Dunwood knew which grandfather was killed in spite of both grandfathers living in New York and Eve never being specific.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: All the titles follow the style <Word> in Death, with two exceptions: Remember When (a two-part novel set half in the present day and half in Eve and company's near-future), and New York To Dallas.
  • If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!:
    • Played with. The killer in one novel murdered a foster mother who abused both her and Eve, and told Eve that they were similar enough to have done the same. Eve says no, she wouldn't.
    • Most of the time, Eve has to speak to Roarke about this to stop him doing something he'll regret.
      • Actually it's more often her stopping him from doing something she'll regret. Roarke, to judge by past example, seems like he'd be perfectly fine with it, but he respects that there are lines it would make Eve unhappy for him to cross.
  • I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder: In "Reunion in Death", parole Officer Otto Shultz justifies the decision to pass Julianna Dunne out of the system because he's "a PO, not a fortune-teller".
  • Internal Affairs:
    • Generally portrayed more positively than is usual for crime-and-punishment fiction, but Eve (and everyone else) still has the usual prejudice against them.
    • Eve seems to think that regular cops should catch dirty cops (how she considers this particularly different than the "rat squad" is unclear). Of course, in the process of catching dirty cops, Eve tends to break departmental regulations and full-blown laws like they were bubbles on bubble wrap.
  • Interservice Rivalry: Oh, man, is this trope played straight to a T or what? The New York Police Department and the Internal Affairs Bureau tend to butt heads a lot in this series. The New York Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have some major hostilities between them. The FBI is mostly portrayed as stuck-up, arrogant, and above the dirty and grimy streets. The New York Police Department and the Homeland Security Organization develop some major hostilities between them. Oddly, the HSO is portrayed like the Central Intelligence Agency - dark, shadowy, powerful, has no conscience, and will break laws and regulations to the point of crossing one too many lines. The CIA is nowhere to be found in this series - whatever happened to it?
    • The CIA is not allowed to operate domestically, so that setup probably got overhauled in the Urban Wars.
    • One book has the Transit Police trying to grab glory in the attempt to capture a fleeing suspect. The supervisor tries to wrest command of the team from Eve, and then a trigger-happy transit cop shoots Trueheart and causes him (and the suspect) to be badly injured. The transit cops (rightly) have some strips of hide taken off by their commander.
  • Irony: Roarke's image of Christ. "The irony of owning an image carved from precious metals of a man who had preached humility never touched him."note 
  • It's All About Me: Common in cases where the killer in question isn't a Sympathetic Murderer or lacks a Freudian Excuse. In particular, Celebrity in Death and Thankless in Death.
  • It's Personal: Quite a few of Eve's cases either start out or end up turning personal when one or more of her loved ones, or someone connected to them, ends up as either a suspect or a witness - Immortal, Vengeance, and Loyalty in Death feature attempts to frame someone close to Eve for one or more murders. (Despite the fact that personal involvement with a key figure in the case should cause Eve to be removed from the investigation due to conflict of interest, somehow this never happens.)
    • In several books, the killer makes it personal by targeting Eve herself, Roarke, or both of them. Vengeance, Betrayal, and Imitation in Death provide some examples; similarly, in Midnight in Death and New York to Dallas, the killer is someone Eve previously caught who is now loose again. In Conspiracy in Death, Eve is framed for murder and for once actually is (temporarily) taken off the case.
    • The entire police department takes it personally any time one of their own is killed, hurt, or threatened, such as in Ceremony, Judgement, Promises, and Apprentice in Death. In Purity in Death the villains inspire a special kind of rage in Eve by managing to, in quick succession, endanger and hurt McNabb, Feeney, Peabody, and Trueheart, who is also forced to make his first kill. Likewise, the corrupt cops in Treachery in Death would already have personally offended Eve thanks to her near-reverential respect for the job and how much she defines herself by her work, but on top of that they scare Peabody half to death when she accidentally witnesses a conversation about their crimes. By the end of the book, Eve is basically trying to dig the deepest possible hole to toss their ringleader into.
  • Jekyll & Hyde: Played straight in Chaos in Death, and good for a serious Oh, Crap! moment.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
    • Eve is blunt, prickly, and confrontational toward most people. Her relationships with no few of her friends and colleagues are characterized by snark and bickering, and she takes opportunities to threaten or insult suspects and unhelpful witnesses with unabashed glee. At the same time, she feels a very personal responsibility to see justice done for the victims in her cases, and takes pains to be gentle (if awkward) with people who are suffering. Her belligerence is mostly dished out to people who can take and give it back or who have earned it by being jerks themselves, and she's a loyal and protective friend to the people who have come to matter to her.
    • Aside from Eve, there's Chief Technician Dickie "Dickhead" Berenski in the NYPSD crime lab. He's whiny, sleazy, and routinely expects if not demands bribes from detectives to prioritize their cases, but he comes through when it matters and and he's supportive and protective of the crime lab techs who work for him.
  • The Lad-ette: Guess.
  • Last-Name Basis:
    • The only ones who regularly call Eve by her first name are Roarke and Dr. Mira.
    • Feeney, Peabody, McNab, Summerset. Common for cops and other law enforcement personnel in general, to the point that Morris - first introduced in Rapture in Death - doesn't have his given name (Li) mentioned until more than two dozen books later in Promises in Death.
    • Roarke takes it to the extreme; presumably he had a given name at one point, but he refuses to claim it now.
    • This gets a Lampshade Hanging when a cop called Carmichael ends up transferred to Eve's division despite there already being a Detective Carmichael. The two are thereafter referred to as "Carmichael" and "Uniform Carmichael"/"the other Carmichael" to differentiate them, with Eve complaining (during Indulgence in Death) that both of them having the same name is confusing and one of them should change theirs.
  • Let Me Get This Straight...: Eve has this reaction in Glory in Death while questioning a suspect.
    Eve: Let's see if I've got this. You were on your way to a meeting, took a wrong turn, and saw a woman brutally murdered. Then you drove away, canceled your meeting, and went to bed. Is that accurate?
  • Like a Daughter to Me: In Conspiracy in Death Mira compares her feelings to Eve to the ones she has for her children.
  • Line-of-Sight Name: Dallas's surname comes from where she was found.
  • Long-Running Book Series
  • Loony Fan: In Obsession in Death, Eve is obliged to start reviewing her considerable accumulation of fanmail for correspondence that may have come from the novel's UNSUB. She's disturbed to discover that she has quite a few loony fans who, despite having never met or interacted with her in person, have constructed elaborate delusions of personal relationships with her.
  • Loophole Abuse: As Roarke points out in Naked in Death, Eve's "been slipping through loopholes to avoid Testing".
  • The Lost Lenore: Morris gains one in Promises following Amaryllis Coltraine's murder. Father Lopez also has one in Salvation.
  • Love Triangle:
    • Webster is in love with Eve who is married to Roarke. Roarke is aware of Webster's infatuations, resulting in the two men fighting each other briefly. Afterwards, they come to an understanding: Webster is in love with Eve, and Roarke doesn't mind as long as Webster doesn't try anything on her, and remembers she is his wife.
    • In Treachery in Death, Webster recently started a relationship with Darcia Angelo and it seems pretty serious. So he's moving on and things are finally resolving.
  • The Maiden Name Debate: Eve keeps her maiden name after marrying Roarke, and is quick to shut down the clueless who try to call her "Lt. Roarke" (or worse, "Mrs. Roarke").
  • Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Inverted. Meg Roarke played along with Patrick in pretending to be the mother of his son either by threat of physical violence or his golden gab, since Patrick had killed Roarke's actual mother Siobhan Brody.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's made clear in Ceremony In Death that the Satanist cult's "magic" is a combination of drugs and tech, but whether Wiccan priestess Isis has real magical abilities is left more ambiguous. Eve, the Agent Scully, steadfastly refuses to consider the possibility, while Roarke and Peabody are more willing to believe.
    • In later books the more supernatural/fantastical elements tend to be relegated to the short stories and novelas between the main novels. Someone who hasn't bothered to track those down could be forgiven for thinking that the maybe magic stuff was all pretty much Early-Installment Weirdness.
  • Meaningful Name: the 50th book will be called Golden in Death, as in a 'golden' Fiftieth wedding anniversary.
  • Mind-Control Device: It turns out that a VR console Roarke was planning to distribute turned out to be this, the doctor who assisted in making the console began using it as a demented way of driving people to suicide with smiles on their faces. Roarke almost meets the same fate except he realizes who the murderer was.
  • Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot:
    • Origin in Death: Murder of a "saintly" doctor → massive decades-old illegal human-cloning and people-made-to-order operation.
    • Born in Death: Murder of two young accountants → tax fraud and another financial crimes → baby-selling ring.
    • Faithless in Death: Murder of artist → Breeding Cult involved in Human Trafficking and related crimes.
  • Momma's Boy: The reveal of Roarke's real mother as a good person turns him into this, unfortunately, she's dead.
  • Morality Chain:
  • Most Writers Are Writers: The case in Dark in Death is connected to a series of murder mystery novels, with the author serving as a witness/consultant to the investigation. There is, duly, quite a bit of discussion regarding the process of writing and publishing and the manner in which writers and their readers engage with fictional characters, as well as a few very pointed observations about how shipping and fan entitlement can get out of hand.
  • Motherhood Is Superior: Averted with Eve Dallas, because while her father Richard Troy was a child molester, her mother, who has many names, is fully revealed to be evil as well in New York To Dallas. Initially subverted with Roarke, with Meg Roarke and Patrick Roarke being equally uncaring Abusive Parents, but in Portrait In Death he learns that his birth mother was actually a sweet young woman named Siobhan Brody, who loved him and didn't see what a monster Patrick Roarke was until it was too late.
  • The Mourning After: Morris spends several books in mourning after Coltraine is murdered in Promises in Death. Four books and a novella later, Indulgence in Death shows him just starting to wear colors other than black again.
  • Mugging the Monster: Eve's abusive former foster mother discovers that Eve has married into the Fiction 500 and tries to blackmail Roarke. Roarke is not having it, already has six killings under his belt, and is very protective of Eve. He terrifies the woman into retreat. She dies, but he didn't do it.
  • Must Have Caffeine: Eve. It's no coincidence that Roarke's first successful courting gift to her is a bag of genuine, high-quality coffee.
  • Mysterious Middle Initial: Thomas X. Brennen and Walter C. Pettibone.
  • Nature Versus Nurture: Eve and Roarke both struggle on and off with the question of how much of their monstrous parents and generally horrible childhoods they carry with them, as they have both genes and environment working against them. The series overall seems to take the stance that while genetics and upbringing can both shape a person, the real answer is often "neither" - for every perp who has a Villainous Lineage or was warped by the circumstances and events of their lives, there's one (examples include Innocent in Death and Thankless in Death) who had perfectly normal, caring parents who did their best to raise their child right, with no history of trauma, abuse, or hereditary mental instability. Some people, it seems, are simply born monsters... but by the same token, it's possible for a person to rise above horrific parents and childhood and make something better out of themselves (Eve and Roarke themselves).
  • Never-Forgotten Skill: Roarke was quite the accomplished pickpocket and thief in general in his youth. He still is, actually, and he'll never forget his skills at stealing as long as he lives.
  • Never Given a Name: Eve Dallas was given that name at the age of eight by the first-responders who found her wandering the streets. Eve refers to the first woman and Dallas refers to the city she was in. Her worthless parents never bothered with giving her a name.
  • Never My Fault: Jerald "Jerry" Reinhold from Thankless in Death never takes responsibility for ANYTHING.
  • Nice Character, Mean Actor: In Celebrity in Death, the actress who plays Peabody in the Icove movie turns out to be a vindictive, obsessively jealous bitch who tries to intimidate, blackmail, and/or stalk various coworkers and associates.
  • Non-Idle Rich: Louise Dimatto, a high society trust fund baby who is dedicated to her career as a doctor and runs a low-income clinic for patients who can't afford much by way of medical care. Roarke is constantly working on various projects and business deals, despite being more than wealthy enough to be as idle as he'd like to be; over the course of the series he also founds a shelter for survivors of domestic abuse and invests in Louise's clinic. Eve also counts after marrying Roarke, though she doesn't really think of his assets as being in any way related to her.
  • No Social Skills: Eve.
  • Not-So-Fake Prop Weapon: In Witness in Death, the lead actor in a stage production of Witness for the Prosecution dies on stage because someone switched a prop knife out with a real one. Subverted; the person who made the switch was the actress who used it to stab the victim during the play, and knew all along what she was doing.
  • Not with Them for the Money: Eve's relationship with Roarke occurs in spite of his obscene wealth rather than because of it. She is horrified when he presents her with an enormous diamond as a souvenir from a trip to Australia, and after their marriage she not only refuses to think of his assets as hers, she gets mad at him when she realizes he's been putting funds into an account in her name and demands that he take it back. (Her standard responses are that she actually married him for the coffee or sex.)
  • Odd Name Out:
    • Remember When breaks the "_____ in Death" title pattern, probably because only half of the book involves Eve.
    • New York to Dallas is fully an Eve Dallas novel. In this case the break in the pattern may be due to the fact that not only does most of the story take place in Dallas, Texas instead of New York City, the case ties significantly into Eve's past.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Eve and Summerset's initial mutual antipathy gradually develops into a ritual of verbal sparring, carried out primarily when Eve comes home after a day's work and Summerset meets her in the foyer to exchange insults. Summerset being absent is not necessarily cause for Eve to be concerned, but any time they meet in the foyer and one of them fails to jab at the other, it's a clear and immediate sign that something serious is going on.
    • And in Golden in Death, Peabody, one of the sweetest, nicest cops you'll ever meet, blows her stack at a snooty school headmistress who's been sneering at her Free Ager background. When he hears about this, Roarke is hard-put to believe it.
  • One-Steve Limit: When Roarke orders his computer to run a "search on Siobhan Brody, born County Clare, Ireland, between 2003 and 2006", the computer finds 33 matches. Filtering the search to display only those who "were one of twins" narrows it down to 4. Roarke finally finds the right one when adding the fact the twin is a girl named Sinead.
  • Only Friend: At the start of the series, Mavis is Eve's one and only friend (with Feeney as more of an authority / surrogate father figure). Before Mavis, she had no friends at all, and well into the series she expresses her bewilderment at the fact that she's somehow accumulated a steadily-expanding number of people who care about her and who matter to her in turn.
  • Only One Name: Roarke. Nora Roberts has stated that she will not reveal his given name.
  • Parental Sexuality Squick: Played subtly with Feeney. As Eve's Parental Substitute, sex is about the only topic that seriously squicks them out.
  • Parental Substitute: Mira and Feeney for Eve. Summerset for Roarke, and later, his long lost Irish relative.
  • Past Experience Nightmare: Eve, often dragged out of them by Roarke. Earlier in the series, certain things will make her lapse into flashback when awake. In later books, as she's begun to resolve some of her Dark and Troubled Past, the flashbacks are less common and the dreams have gradually evolved from panic-inducing nightmares into calmer and semi-lucid, if no less unsettling, dream conversations with the victim(s) and sometimes the perps of the investigation du jour.
    • Roarke himself finds himself in these situations as well, though not as often as Eve. Most of the nightmares tend to occur when a case reminds him of (or directly involves) his past or his father, though these dreams don't usually garner as dramatic a reaction as Eve's. The dreams that do get that reaction, however, are the ones that involve seeing Eve hurt or killed.
  • Percussive Maintenance: Eve's standard method of dealing with any and all technology.
  • Politeness Judo: Roarke is an nth degree black belt in it.
  • Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Eve has very little awareness of or interest in pop culture, to the point that her failure to recognize references is a minor Running Gag. Presumably this comes from her lack of a childhood, extreme focus on police work, and general isolation from most other people prior to getting involved with Roarke. Among many other things, she's shown to be ignorant of Iron Man, Batman, James Bond, Star Trek and other fandoms mentioned throughout the books (Calculated In Death has a bunch of these), and rarely recognizes the contemporary celebrities of the setting. She also has no ear for music, a fact Lampshaded and lamented on by Feeney who often reacts with disgust at her lack of knowledge in it. She is well-informed on famous murder cases (Like Jack the Ripper) and will study up on a particular piece of pop culture if it's relevant to a case she's working.
  • Posthumous Character: Eve's father Richard Troy was dead long before the series began, but he is nevertheless a major figure in the series. He appears in Eve's nightmares and flashbacks from the first book onward; as Eve gradually remembers more about her childhood, Roarke eventually manages to discover his name and other details about him, culminating in the discovery (in Divided in Death) that Homeland Security was using Troy as an informant and knew what he was doing to Eve but did not intervene, and also that Troy did business with Patrick Roarke and was probably planning to sell Eve to him as a child prostitute. To a lesser extent, Roarke's father Patrick carries a lingering influence despite also having been dead for more than twenty years at the beginning of the series,
  • Powers via Possession: In Possession in Death, Eve get possessed by an old gypsy's ghost and seems to gain a few powers, of sorts. She can read Russian and Romanian, and see dead people. When the spirit leaves, she offers to give Eve her gift of seeing the dead, but is turned down.
  • Pragmatic Hero: Eve Dallas
  • Precision C Strike: The only time Eve uses the word in the entire series kicks off a particularly vicious stream of invective.
    • Then again when describing a nightmare where her mom tries to kill Bella.
  • Pretty Boy: Roarke has a talent for inspiring Perverse Sexual Lust in Eve's female associates, to her annoyance. There's also Charles Monroe, for whom it is an asset to his (former) line of work as a Licensed Companion. Chief Medical Examiner Li Morris, described by Peabody as "seriously sexy," is a Long-Haired Pretty Boy with black hair, "exotic" dark eyes, and a sense of style that Eve describes as "like an uptown rock star."
  • Print Long-Runners: 50 titles plus.
  • Protagonist-Centered Morality:
    • 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 Jumping Off the Slippery Slope.
    • 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. She has Roarke erase the documents, and states quite clearly to him that she is crossing the line. Of course, the book goes out of its way to show that the killer was an evil, cowardly man who would rather kill himself painlessly than face the consequences of both his actions and his failing health, so little sympathy for him is found in this case. If it is any consolation, Eve discusses her actions with Roarke in Salvation in Death, and concludes that this is not something she wants to make a regular habit of doing.
    • Even outside of extreme measures, Eve's normal methods of operating are those generally considered to be some of the worst aspects of law enforcement officers who abuse their authority. She threatens people to obtain information rather than pursue a more ethical and legal option, frequently coerces people into cooperating by threatening to arrest them on trumped-up or minor charges (frequently referred to as being arrested for "contempt of cop" by watchdog organizations), and has more than once physically assaulted someone secure in the knowledge that she can get away with it because of her position. While she often makes a show of being strictly by-the-book to avoid having a conviction thrown out (or herself being disciplined), her repeated violation of both the letter and the spirit of various laws shows that it's purely for the sake of getting her own way, not because she actually believes in it as she consistently claims to. Meaning that while Eve may not be a corrupt cop, that she's a bad one is hard to argue.
  • Psychic Powers: Some have been proven scientifically by the time of the series, and possessors thereof are registered with the state. Peabody's brother Zeke has them, and they form a part of Visions in Death's plot.
  • Psycho Supporter: The murderer in Obsession in Death styles themself as Eve's "true and loyal friend," murdering people who they perceive as having offended or injured Eve and escaped or otherwise flouted justice. Given the confrontational attitude that Eve takes with just about everyone, she quickly realizes with discomfort that the list of potential future victims is uncountably long.
  • Race Against the Clock: Whitney gives Eve 36 hours to either book Roarke or rule him out as a suspect. Later, when Eve summons Roarke to answer questions, she says he has 48 hours to show up or the Station Guard will escort him. He complies.
  • A Rare Sentence: From Brotherhood in Death:
Eve: I expect the lab to confirm the elephant this morning.
Roarke: That's not a phrase you hear often.
Eve: Heavy object used to whack Mr. Mira. Fancy elephant statue.
  • Real Award, Fictional Character: The movie based on Nadine's book about the Icove case, The Icove Agenda, ends up winning several Oscars including Best Actress and Best Picture. Nadine herself takes home the gold statue for Best Adapted Screenplay.
  • Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: In-Universe. Dallas, a firm tomboy with little use for or interest in fashion or makeup, is torn between disdain and admiration of more traditionally feminine women. She perpetually disapproves uncomfortably of Peabody's ventures into personalizing her style with "girlie" touches like fashionable clothes and bright colors, which Eve finds inappropriate for a cop, and she's alternately impressed and baffled by Dr. Mira's classical Proper Lady style. The series itself doesn't really take Dallas' side, though. Thankfully, Roarke is savvy enough of both fashion and Eve's tastes that he can choose something for Eve that both compliments her femininity while not overdoing it, and makes sure the outfit doesn't downplay her badassery in the slightest.
  • Reincarnation Romance: zig-zagged. In Ceremony in Death the Wiccan Priestess Isis (who is a registered psychic) tells Roarke that this isn't the first lifetime that he and Eve have loved each other. Roarke likes the idea but remains politely skeptical.
  • Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?: A number of Eve's more sensational cases get brought up throughout the series, but the Icove case is the most popular. In the novels that follow Origin in Death, the story gets turned into a bestselling book in-universe, and then into a movie. When the movie adaptation wins several Oscars in Leverage in Death, Eve resigns herself to the fact that she is never going to stop hearing about it.
    • Nadine mentions at one point that she's working on another book, based on the case in Delusion in Death, which is probably going to start the cycle all over again.
  • Ridiculously Human Robot: There are "droids", both human and animal, but close observation can make them as not real.
  • Ripped from the Headlines: The science gone bad stories often feature concepts that are theoretical now.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
    • Prior to the series, Roarke murdered six men in revenge for their rape and murder of Summerset's daughter Marlena. The deaths in Vengeance in Death, the book in which this is revealed, turn out to be the Cycle of Revenge coming around again at the hands of the wife and son of one of the original six victims.
    • The villain in Thankless in Death considers his murders as vengeance, but it's more that he's a sociopathic, narcissistic scumbag who is convinced that nothing is his fault and all his problems are the works of others trying to screw him over.
    • The victims in Brotherhood in Death are tortured and their bodies left with the message 'Justice Is Served'. Eve's investigation eventually discovers that they had drugged and gang-raped a woman a year for forty-nine years, and were killed by three of their victims after the suicide of a fourth.
    • In Apprentice in Death, Reginald Mackie and his daughter Willow are ticking off a hit-list of people who Reginald blames for the death of his second wife and unborn son in a traffic accident, including the victim's OBGYN (her appointment ran late), the beat cop who handled the accident scene, and the attorney he hired to try to prove someone was at fault after the death was ruled accidental. In a subversion, Mackie was encouraged into the revenge plan by Willow, who doesn't actually care about her stepmother's death and just wants the opportunity to kill people.
  • Running Gag:
    • The candy thief, who is probably just waiting to become a Chekhov's Gunman.
    • Eve's ongoing feud with all sorts of mechanical and/or electronic systems. For example, the drink machine at Eve's precinct which seems to hate her as much she hates it. It's practically Once a Novel that she orders someone else to get her a tube of Pepsi from the thing.
    • Eve forgetting or losing her gloves, and everyone's recognition of the same. In Midnight in Death she's appalled when Summerset tells her that the gloves Roarke has given her are handmade mink-lined Italian leather: "Mink lining, for Christ's sake. I'll have lost them by next week, then some stupid mink will have died for nothing."
    • Before getting her special car from Roarke, Eve had a minor running gag about her problems with requisitions because of her cars always getting blown up or wrecked, and them giving her terrible replacements.
    • Detective Jenkinson's hideous ties. He has a different one in every appearance. (Readers get the impression that Roberts has a lot of fun thinking them up.) His partner often wears hideous socks to match.
    • In Devoted in Death another pair of detectives in Eve's team are sent down to Texas, and the male detective comes back wearing a Stetson, to general ridicule. He explains that he lost a bet to his female partner (possibly involving a mechanical bull) and has to wear it for a week as his penance. Every alternative book since, Eve runs into the detective while he's wearing the Stetson around the bullpen, and asks why. The answer is always "I lost a bet [to his partner] about..." It gets to the point where Eve simply asks, "What was the bet?"
  • Sailor's Ponytail: Roarke has longish hair which he normally wears loose, but when sitting down to do some intensive technical work he pulls it back in a stubby ponytail which the narration, via Eve's point of view, describes as making him look vaguely piratical
  • Sarcasm Mode: Eve on the first book when her friend Mavis learns that she knows Roarke and asks for details. "We’ve had a secret, passionate affair for the last three years, during which time I bore him a son who’s being raised on the far side of the moon by Buddhist monks."
  • Scary Black Man: Chief Tibble and Crack, in very different fashions: as Da Chief, Tibble is a stern, intimidating authority figure. Crack, meanwhile, is the heavily-tattooed bouncer of a dive bar in a bad part of town, who's actually a nice guy when he's not angry.
  • Secret Compartment: In Glory in Death, the second book in the series, Officer Peabody finds the killer's stash of trophies taken from his victims in a secret compartment in his sofa. She explains that when she was a child her father liked to build things with hidden compartments for his children to find, so she was able to easily recognize one.
  • Self-Made Man: Roarke was a poor immigrant from Ireland and became one of the richest men on Earth. As revealed in Naked in Death, Roarke was delivering a cargo to a customer who tried to kill him to avoid paying the transportation fee but his would-be-killer "was distracted by [Roarke's] foot in his crotch".
    Roarke: In the end, I had the fee, the cargo, and the Baretta. And so, Roarke Industries was born out of his poor judgment.
    • Later on the same book, he claims he made his first million gambling.
  • Self-Made Orphan: Eve. Both parents, with 20 years in between. Justified like you wouldn't believe, though.
  • Serial Killer: Several, but particularly The Groom from Creation in Death.
  • Shout-Out: In Glory in Death, Eve dubs a suspect's lawyers "Moe, Larry and Curly."
  • Sidekick: Delia Peabody to Eve; Troy Trueheart to Baxter.
  • Sins of the Father: Subverted. Roarke's father was a notorious and cruel criminal, a reputation Roarke has had to go to some effort to shake off (Roarke doesn't hit women for example, unless when sparring) to the extent it makes him The Dreaded, although his own history adds to it too. When he finds out he has family on his real mother's side he expects them to blame him for her death and want some of his money in recompense. Instead they welcome him with open arms.
  • Slap-Slap-Kiss:
    • Peabody and McNab.
    • The essence of Eve and Roarke's whole relationship even after they get married.
  • Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: A minor example, as Mavis's daughter Bella is born in January of 2060 in Born in Death but by the summer (Treachery in Death) she is up walking and (kind of) talking. But in Devoted in Death, set in early January 2061, it's mentioned her first birthday is coming up.
  • Socially Awkward Hero: Eve isn't the most socially-adjusted person by far, with a very notable aversion towards anything she considers "girly", which is justified given the absolutely horrific things she experienced at the hands of her Grade-A Scumbag parents when she was a girl. However, with the help of Peabody and the other friends she makes during the course of the series, she is able to overcome her traumas and be more open-minded about doing "girly" things with them.
  • The Sociopath: A large part of murderers in Eve's roster are sociopaths.
  • Sole Survivor: Poor little Nixie Swisher witnesses the slaughter of her whole family at the tender age of nine. (Survivor in Death)
  • Strange Minds Think Alike: In Witness in Death, Eve answers the assertion that Roarke would jump in front of a maxibus for her by saying, "They don't go very fast." Later in the book she asks Roarke, who was not present for the original conversation, if he would jump in front of a maxibus for her. His reply is, "Absolutely. They don't go very fast."
  • Strawman Political: In the first book at the very least, the parties have discarded their former names and are now just the Conservatives, Moderates, and so on. The Conservatives are evil and corrupt to a man, depicted as snarling tyrants obsessed with destroying contraception because they hate women being able to control their reproductive faculties. And of course, the Conservative Senator who wants to make prostitution illegal and gun ownership legal is a slobbering, incestuous child-raper.
  • Suspect Existence Failure: This trope popped up in Innocent In Death. After Craig Foster's murder, Eve Dallas ends up focusing on Reed Williams as the prime suspect. Take a wild guess on what happens next.
  • Swiss Bank Account: Any number of perps use numbered accounts in foreign banks as a means of hiding illegal transactions and ill-gotten gains, beginning with Chief Simpson in Naked in Death. Tracking these down and making sense of the figures is a job often delegated to Roarke, whose combination of financial expertise and hacking skills makes him very good at it.
  • Sympathetic Murder Backstory:
    • Both Eve and Roarke turn out to have murder in their backstories. As a child, Eve stabbed her father to death in self-defense when he raped and beat her. Roarke, meanwhile, turns out in Vengeance in Death to have gone on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and killed several men involved in the rape, torture, and death of Summerset's daughter Marlena.
    • It's eventually revealed that Summerset was the one who killed Roarke's father. He did so because Patrick was demanding Summerset hand Roarke back over to him, threatening to have both Roarke and Marlena raped and then use his connections in the local police to have Summerset accused of abusing them. As the person themselves put it with quiet dignity:
    Summerset: I had children to protect.
  • Sympathetic Villain, Despicable Villain: Origin in Death features two main antagonists in Dr. Jonah D. Wilson and Deena Flavia. Dr. Jonah is a vile Evilutionary Biologist who wants to mold humanity into his egomaniacal vision and has for centuries been cloning young men or women to make them into spies or sex slaves for the highest bidder. In contrast, Deena Flavia is a clone and Professional Killer created by Dr. Jonah who now wants to save the rest of her clone sisters and put a stop to his operation once and for all by killing off the members of his conspiracy.
  • Taking the Nerve Disruptor:
    • Eve does this for Summerset, her continuing low-level antagonist.
    • Roarke gets saved from a stab wound in the same manner by Mick Connelly, leading to one of the tearjerkers in the series.
  • Therapy Is for the Weak: Eve isn't very receptive to Mira at first, but she comes around, and even sees psychology as a valuable tool.
  • There Are No Psychologists: Averted. Charlotte Mira serves both as Eve's confidante and case consultant/The Profiler. Eve has also been known to recommend Dr. Mira to others who've gone through especially traumatic experiences, and Nadine is revealed to have some sessions with her as well.
  • To the Pain: Roarke explains to a shadow of Eve's past that he'd like nothing more than to peel the skin from her bones. One thin layer at a time.
  • Tomboy and Girly Girl:
    • Dallas and Peabody. One's the hard-charging badass cop, the other tries to be. But their reactions to Trina the stylist (Dallas: Dear God no!, Peabody: Let me at it!) really bring it home.
    • Also Dallas and Mavis. And Dallas and Dr. Mira. Really, any other female character in the series is girly compared to Eve.
    • Most of the men are girly compared to Eve, sometimes Roarke will know more about feminine matters than Eve herself. Which isn't hard, to tell the truth.
  • Too Dumb to Live: You sometimes wonder why some victims still know how to breathe. A shining example would be the one in Eternity in Death.
  • Tranquil Fury: Roarke is the champion of this trope within the series; Eve is actually more concerned about Roarke when he gets like this than when his anger shows in his actions. Compounded by the fact that his natural demeanor is calm, polite, and openly friendly, and that the change from genuine affability to "he-is-about-to-literally-murder-you-and-burn-everything-you-hold-dear-without-even-breaking-his-smile" is so subtle that victims of his wrath don't even realize the danger until he's holding them by the throat or gleefully describing the ways he will destroy them.
  • Trauma-Induced Amnesia: Eve, who had forgotten most of her Dark and Troubled Past at the start of the series.
  • Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Eve and Roarke's childhoods were not good. Also, Rayleen Straffo in Innocent in Death.
  • Turn in Your Badge:
    • When Eve is called out for getting personally involved with Roarke in spite of the latter being a suspect of a murder she's investigating, she tells Whitney he'll have to take her badge if he pulls her off the case. He refuses. She declares that, if she turns out to be wrong about Roarke being innocent, her superiors won't have to ask for her badge.
    • In Conspiracy in Death, leading to a major Heroic BSoD for Eve and royally pissing off Roarke.
  • Undying Loyalty: Eve and Roarke to each other. Eve to Feeney. Eve's squad to Eve, especially Peabody.
  • Unscrupulous Hero: Roarke.
  • Vengeful Vending Machine: Eve Dallas hates vending machines, and the feeling seems to be mutual. They tend to malfunction whenever she attempts to use one. It's so bad that she habitually has someone else put her money in for her and press the button whenever she wants to buy something from one.
  • Villainous Breakdown: Some murderers are subjected to this when Even foils them.
  • Villainous Mother-Son Duo: Madeline Bullock, the main antagonist of Born In Death, is a particularly nasty version. She uses her son Chase as the muscle in her infant trafficking operation, having Chase kill off her targets. She's likewise been sexually abusing Chase since his childhood. Eve Dallas outright accuses her of intentionally corrupting him for her own benefit.
  • Villain by Default: There's plenty of those, with drug dealers, pedophiles, defense attorneys, and others.
  • Walking Techbane: Machines tend to misbehave around Eve, maybe because she beats them half to death when they aren't cooperating.
  • Western Terrorists: Doomsday (a cyber-terrorist group) and Cassandra, the latter in turn being an offshoot of the pre-series Western Terrorists Apollo.
  • What a Piece of Junk: Eve's latest car is a gift from Roarke, and is fast, reliable, and filled with all sorts of gadgets, including Vertical Mode and a built-in Auto-Chef....however, from the outside, it looks like a junker. This is both for protection, since Eve often has to park her vehicle in seedy areas where an obviously expensive car would be a magnet for theft and vandalism, and so as not to draw resentment from other cops who would see driving a flashy vehicle as an indication that Eve was more interested in personal appearances than her job.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: When Crack returns from his Walking the Earth stint, Eve asks him to help her with some undercover work. His attempts and the results of such have yet to be mentioned.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Droids are a bit of a muddy area, here. While no one outright says they're sentient, and it's mostly implied that they're just well-programmed to emulate some emotional responses, they do display traits like fear and self-preservation... usually when Eve threatens to have them taken apart or destroyed for not being as cooperative as she'd like.
    • Obsession In Death takes this a step further by introducing droid police officers. Called "D-Officers," they appear to be utilized as first-response officers in places where it would be difficult or dangerous for human officers to arrive in a timely fashion. Along with being made to look distinctively like human beings, they act mostly like humans as well, going by given names and even managing to look somewhat amused when Eve makes a lewd and unfriendly bystander talk by utilizing a very unfriendly grip on him.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: "Isn't it funny how no one likes a dirty cop, but nobody wants to hang out with the guys that catch them?" Eve promptly ignores this utterly apt and pointed observation from her former friend and continues to refer to Internal Affairs as the "rat squad".
  • Who Murdered the Asshole: Several cases have a wealth of suspects thanks to the victim being a terrible, or at least thoroughly unlikable, person (see Asshole Victim).
    • One textbook example is Richard Draco in Witness in Death, who proves to have been such scum while he was alive that Eve for the first time in the series admits that she can't feel any sympathy for him nor condemn his murderer, considering that she killed him for starting an exploitative sexual relationship with their unwitting daughter. Agatha Christie references abound.
    • Another standout is Larinda Mars in Secrets in Death, a celebrity gossip reporter with no personal or professional ethics to speak of. She's quickly revealed to have been a blackmailer who excelled at digging up traumatic events from the past to hold over her victims - or outright manufacturing scandals to hold over them. Between the long list of her victims and the even longer list of their family and loved ones, Eve has a multitude of motivated suspects to try to sort through.
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?:
    • Eve has a severe fear of heights. Only her iron discipline keeps her from externalizing her strong internal reaction. She also has a fear of cows, but it's not as violent. Both of these are symptomatic of a general case of semi-agoraphobia, derived from living in large cities all her (remembered) life.
    • Both shrink as to nothing compared to her fear and loathing of anything even vaguely resembling a hospital. In fact, no matter how injured or fatigued she is the only way to get her to submit to treatment is if she's unconscious and/or physically restrained. It verges on the masochistic. Given one of Eve’s first memories after murdering her hideously abusive father is waking up in a hospital and being asked questions by doctors and police she simply can’t answer, “who are you, where are your parents, etc,” this is kind of understandable.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Holiday In Death and Portrait In Death have killers who could be considered this. Those killers suffered losses that was the end of the world for them. They turned to murder because for them, it's the only way to unleash the pain. Those killers are also implied to have been born with untreated mental disorders. Perhaps they are unsympathetic, but it can be agreed that they are pathetic.
  • World War III: The Urban Wars, a period of very violent worldwide civil unrest. Roarke mentions that it ran longer in Ireland than most places.
  • Wunza Plot: A multi-millionare ex-criminal and a cop team up together to solve crimes.
  • You Didn't Ask: In Naked in Death, Roarke mentions that DeBlass used to buy guns from the black market. When Eve asks why he didn't tell her before, he says she didn't ask.
  • You Do NOT Want To Know: In Vengeance in Death, Eve asks what's in the "meat stuff" she's eating (actually blood pudding). Roarke says, "You’ll thank me for not telling you. Just enjoy it."

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