History Literature / InDeath

** 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 ([[NoodleIncident 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?"

** 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 [[NoodleIncident(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?"

** 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.)

* AFatherToHisMen: Dallas is a [[GenderFlip 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.

* AffectionateNickname: 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.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/in_death.jpg]]

* BigBrotherInstinct: Roarke tends to harbor protective instincts toward Eve's female colleagues, though they're not particularly weak. This is probably due to his deceased sister.

* ReincarnationRomance: 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 sceptical.

** Harm a child? [[NeverHurtAnInnocent Not on Eve's watch]]! See AbusiveParents above.
** 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 [[ItsPersonal 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.

** 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.
** [[CorruptCop Police corruption]] for Eve.
** 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.
** '''''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 TranquilFury below.

** 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 NiceGuy cousin into selling their grandparents' house against the grandfather's final wishes. The investigation eventually reveals even worse: [[spoiler: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 [[spoiler:only two of the six are still alive to face prosecution for their crimes, while three of their victims will have to go to jail for killing them]].

* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: 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 an Urban Revolt that occurred in the early 21st century and ended in 2016.

* SerialKiller: Several, but particularly The Groom.

* ''Ritual in Death'' (2008). A novella.

* ''Devoted in Death'' (2015)

* ''Secrets in Death''
* ''Dark in Death''
* ''Leverage in Death''

* ''Vendetta in Death''

* ''Creation in Death'' (2007)

** ''Born In Death'' has a group who take in unwed teenage mothers and sell their babies to rich customers.

* DisproportionateRetribution: 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 [[spoiler:he gave Rayleen Straffo an A-minus on her project instead of an A-plus]].

* ScaryBlackMan: Chief Tibble and Crack, in very different fashions: as DaChief, Tibble is a stern, intimidating authority figure. Crack, meanwhile, is the heavily-tattooed bouncer of a dive bar in a bad part of town.

* MinorCrimeRevealsMajorPlot: Several instances.

* {{Deconstruction}}: The setting can be seen as one of the idea of a social utopia, as discussed in the Dystopia entry below: Sure, guns may be 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, but 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.

* {{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 (for example, the 2nd Amendment has been mostly repealed). 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 Mary Sue Topia. 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.

* PopCulturalOsmosisFailure: Eve has very little awareness of or interest in pop culture, to the point that her failure to recognize references is a minor RunningGag. 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 IronMan, Franchise/{{Batman}}, Film/JamesBond, StarTrek 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 [[TheMentor Feeney]] who often reacts with disgust at her lack of knowledge in it. She ''is'' well-informed on famous murder cases (Like UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper) and will study up on a particular piece of pop culture if it's relevant to a case she's working.

* CloningBlues: ''Origin in Death''; and you thought SpiderMan had it bad...

* DartboardOfHate: 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".

* GoThroughMe: 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.

* {{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]]Line from "Vengeance in Death".[[/note]]

* LetMeGetThisStraight: Eve has this reaction in "Glory in Death" while questioning a suspect.

* LoopholeAbuse: As Roarke points out in "Naked in Death", Eve's "been slipping through loopholes to avoid Testing".

* SelfMadeMan: 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".

* ShoutOut: In "Glory in Death", Eve dubs a suspect's lawyers ''[[Film/TheThreeStooges Moe, Larry and Curly]]''.

* YouDidntAsk: 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.
* YouDoNOTWantToKnow: In "Vengeance in Death", Eve asks what's in the "meat stuff" she's eating and Roarke says "You’ll thank me for not telling you".