In this episode of Podcast in Death, We dive into another "We Review the Reviews" session. This time taking on Apprentice in Death and wow, do the one-star reviewers have thoughts. Is Roarke just a billionaire Mary Sue with too much access to NYPSD investigations? Is a laser rifle supposed to have recoil? And most importantly… is outrage over Nora calling a fictional school “Hillary Clinton High” the hill to die on?

We also make a big announcement: for the next three months, we’re taking a detour into Nora Roberts’ Chronicles of the One series! We’ve teased it before, but now we’re finally doing it—and yes, Tara will actually finish the series this time. (Fingers crossed.)

Highlights of this episode include:

• Rants about how Nora's fictional science doesn't match up with some people's view of Real Science.

• So many people really pissed about Roarke’s 10-minute miracle app that would be impossible for anyone to do, except now it can be done with ChatGPT.

• A laser-focused (pun intended) takedown of angry reviewers who just… really need to stop reading if they hate the books this much.

• A moment of appreciation for Susan Ericksen, aka Saint Susan of Ericksen, and her flawless narration.

In this episode we review "Apprentice in Death," where Willow Mackie is one of the absolute worst characters on the planet.

AJ had a theory about the theme that might sound a little random at first, but hear her out: the theme of this book is cold. And she has the receipts. There are literal mentions of “cold blood” everywhere and Feeney even says, “You can’t teach cold blood, Dallas.” But also, randomly, there’s a subplot about Eve owning the most elite ice cream shop in NYC (Because Roarke), and yes, the killers went there for caramel sundaes after murdering people. Feeney’s reaction? “Fucking cold. And I ain't talking ice cream.”

We love the scene where Eve consults with Lowenbaum at "The Dallas Palace," but we are sad when Lowenbaum later faces some really hard truths.

This is the book where Willow Mackie decides to execute a mass "Pew, Pew"-ing, and it just so happens to be at Madison Square Garden where Mavis is playing and Summerset took Roarke's tickets to go see her. Eve and Roarke are both panicked as they speed down to the scene. Many people are dead or injured but all of Eve and Roarke's people are fine and they are relieved. Eve is so relieved that she asks Summerset to make sure Dickie Berenski is okay. Is EVE okay??

This is also the book where we first meet Jake!! Nadine warns him Eve won’t recognize him. She doesn’t. He’s already calling her “Lois.” We love him.

After a very emotional and exhausting night, Eve and Roarke fight over whether or not Eve should question Summerset at that very moment. Roarke says no, Eve says yes. We have to say, we are siding with Eve on this one. We understand that Roarke loves his people and worries about them, but Eve and Summerset need to work things out on their own.

Also, this was a really interesting book to read right after reading "Bonded," as Summerset talks about having an "Urban Wars" flashback.

In this episode, because we just read "Bonded in Death," and got some more good information about some details of Summerset's involvement in the "Urban Wars," we thought that we would re-visit this topic, since the first time we talked about it way back on Episode #19, we were OFF topic more than we were ON topic.

We also talk about how like it or not, this series...and books in general ARE political, so politics are going to come up from time to time. We recognize that talking too much politics might lose us some listeners, but when it's relevant to a book, we are going to bring it up. We are hoping that the majority of our listeners understand this and will stick with us.

Anyway...we were both a bit distracted in this episode, but hopefully, it's still entertaining!