In Death / YMMV - TV Tropes

Alternative Character Interpretation: Are Eve's Jerkass tendencies part of her way of coping her Dark and Troubled Past? Or is it In the Blood now that it's revealed how horrible her parents were?
Archive Panic: Over 50 books as of early 2021 (with two new ones coming out each year), plus the second half of Remember When, as well as 10 novellas. Fortunately, they're quick reads, and similar to shows like CSI, you don't need to read them all.
Complete Monster: See here.
Fridge Logic: "Tubes" of soda, presumably plastic. Apparently the point is to say, "Look at us, the future isn't so enviro-meanie as to use cans." But, aluminum is far easier to recycle than plastic (Penn & Teller: Bullshit! has a good rundown on this). The supposed "eco-friendly" solution, in a world that is practically eco-fascist, is actually the less friendly solution. If intentional, it's a great lampshade hanging on how the green movement is often more about what "feels" eco-friendly than what is; if unintentional, it's just a straight example.
- Bio-degradable plastic, maybe? But then that opens questions on how vendors prevent their products from having an obscenely limited shelf-life compared to aluminum cans. Or perhaps they are aluminum, and calling a soda can a "tube" is just another permutation of Future Slang making itself present.
Harsher in Hindsight: In Rapture in Death, published in 1996 and set in 2058, the Twin Towers are suspected to be the target of a terrorist attack. The target turns out to be the Statue of Liberty.
Les Yay: Dallas and Peabody, but only for humor, as they are both straight and in committed relationships.
Peabody (explaining her lateness): ..."Then I couldn't sleep because of the jitters, so I jumped McNab to sort of remind myself why I'm doing this..."
...
"Was okay until the subway breakdown. That threw me off, and now I've got the jitters again."
Dallas: "You can just forget about jumping me to take your mind off them."
— (Imitation In Death)
Magnificent Bastard: NYPSD Lieutenant Eve Dallas, Roarke, and their allies have faced dozens of intelligent criminals, but a select few stand out for their charisma and intelligence:
- Origin in Death: Deena Flavia is a clone created to be the perfect spy by Dr. Wilfred B. Icove Sr. and Jr. and Dr. Jonah D. Wilson, who rebelled against her masters. Before the series, Deena reinvented herself as a stylish thief and hitwoman and plotted to take down her abusive creators and save the rest of her "sisters", the other clones. Deena pulls off perfect assassinations against the various members of The Conspiracy using various methods: pretending to be a client to take one off-guard and murder them by surprise; and using the spouse of another to trick him into being defenseless before striking and using a disguise to infiltrate the building of one of her other targets. Deena also gets a rare win for a killer in the series, being able to die peacefully with her mission complete and using her last words to clear her conspirators from trouble.
- "Missing in Death" novella: Ivan Draski, the inventor of the memory-erasing Lost Time device, is a former government scientist who worked for the government when they orchestrated a False Flag Operation to kill his wife and young daughter. When Draski finds out the truth, he plots revenge on Dana Buckley, the assassin who killed his family. Using his device on a ferry passenger to cause a diversion—but making sure she won't suffer any lasting harm—Draski brutally murders Buckley and destroys his device to make sure nobody gets their hands on it. Posing as Buckley, Draski also sets up an auction to sell the device and entrap some "really bad guys", before turning himself in to Eve, willing to face justice when he finds out the man who ordered his family's murder played a role in Eve's childhood.
- Concealed in Death & Desperation in Death: Sebastian is a relentlessly charming thief and Con Man who helps protect the street children. Sebastian helps train them as thieves and pickpockets, yet also actually does care about them and goes out of his way to ensure they get to live happy lives, even being willing to help Lieutenant Eve Dallas go after far worse monsters to do it. Sebastian is also able to manipulate others with just a few words and helps to dispel threats to both himself and to those under his care.
Strawman Has a Point: One novel has another female character claim that Eve attempts to fit in with a male-dominated field by acting like a man and eschewing her femininity. This is presented in such a way that it's supposed to show the character as being shallow and arrogant, and simply using her sex appeal to get by. The thing is, she's right... Eve's desire to avoid anything "girly" often borders on obsession, and until several years into their marriage she freaks out at Roarke displaying affection for her in public for fear that someone she knows will see and think she's some weak emotional woman for kissing her husband. Notably, Portrait in Death contains a flashback to Eve's childhood in which her mother beat her for getting into her cosmetics, so Eve's aversion to girliness may in fact be rooted at least in part in her horrific childhood (and even the very first book notes outright that Eve secretly admires women who are good at putting themselves together in a classically feminine style like Dr. Mira and Roarke's admin Caro). The specific example cited above may be less a case of a misaimed strawman and more a case of an obnoxious person whose point is dismissed out of hand because she's being obnoxious about it, and later novels do in fact have Eve allowing herself to embrace her femininity with the help and support of her friends and loved ones, signifying her own Character Development as she shakes off the inner demons haunting her past and, indeed, making said strawman's point seem short-sighted and obnoxious.
Squick:
- Eve and Roarke are examining the apartment of a sleazy murder victim (who they also discover to be a date rapist). In the process, Roarke remarks on (and handles) some vaguely defined but kinky sex toy. And then steals it, presumably to use on Eve later. Second hand sex toy, already very ew... second hand sex toy belonging to a rapist? Ugh.
- At one point Eve is investigating the death of a woman who committed suicide after partaking in a virtual reality session and, trying to figure out what caused it, plays the session in question—which turns out to be a porn sim, inducing Eve to orgasm before she even realizes what is going on. She's notably disturbed, not just by the artificial, electronically-induced climax itself that the sim more or less forced her to experience, but also the fact that people willingly plug into such recordings for this express purpose.

YMMV / In Death

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