Rapture in Death: Eve Dallas vs mind-controlling virtual reality videogames

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Eve Dallas married Irish prince charming last book, after defeating the evil villain with the magic anti-aging drug that kills users. This book starts when a young engineer with no history of depression or suicidality hangs himself in his room at Roarke's outer space resort, where Eve and Roarke are finishing their honeymoon. I think this might be the first time I read this installment because I remembered nothing of the plot. Except for one subplot I will get to in a minute, I quite enjoyed this book from beginning to end.

Since this series is set Twenty Minutes Into the Future but publication began in 1995, earlier installments have a decidedly retro-future feel to them. Most of the time, it's odd blips like state-of-the-art, futuristic computers running on "discs", or people remarking about how only certain professionals have "links" (cell phones) with them at all times. Other times, Robb includes moral dilemmas about "new" technologies and/or scientific advancements that hinge on outdated theories.

In this installment, Roberts tackles the controversy about "nature vs nurture" through the lens of "genetics vs. environment". I wouldn't say that this conflict has been settled already, but Rapture in Death was published in 1996 and the Human Genome Project was declared complete in 2003. The doctor that argues in favor of the genetics side of the debate in this book espouses ideas that would only be entertained in some weird neo-Nazi "scientific magazine" today. I'll let this quote speak for itself:

Not that Reeanna is an actual neo-Nazi, it's just that the scientific concensus today is that the relationship between genes and the environment is more complicated than "genes --> behavior"

I was fiver-years-old in 2003, so I wasn't particularly interested in debates about genetics. Mostly, I was upset that the main character in Sailor Moon didn't wear a mask, yet no one recognized her outside her "costume", and that the city in Power Rangers was always rebuilt in a day. That being said, I did learn about the uglier history of the early "science" of genetics in undergrad.

One of my older professors once recounted a conference where an "expert" argued that genes were responsible for all disabilities, including the ones that were a result of accidents. This expert argued that genes were responsible for dexterity, quick reflexes, and intelligence, and that a dexterous, intelligent person with good reflexes would never get into a serious accident in the first place. Is it difficult to imagine this line of thinking leading to the conclusion that those with "inferior" genes ought to be eliminated for the sake of our society? Perhaps for their own good?

The intricacies of the relationship between genetic expression and the environment aren't fully understood, but it's pretty much accepted that the environment does affect genetic expression, and not just in an evolutionary sense. The environment affects genetic expression affects individual organisms, which is what leads to the idea of "modifiable risk factors" in medicine. In other words, don't engage in Behavior X and your chances of developing Disease X later in life will decrease. But I'm digressing into a subject that's veering dangerously close to biochemistry. Back to the actual book.

Roberts did something with this book that I don't recall from any other I've read in this series, except for one of the later ones. She seemed to reveal the culprit in the first act of the book.

Jess is some music producer type working with Mavis, Eve's aspiring pop star BFF. 

Immediately, I thought "red herring". We never get to figure out the killer in the first act unless Eve also figures it out, and the book's plot becomes about chasing a known murderer. Normally, that would be fine. Red herrings are common in detective fiction, though I did find this one a little too heavy handed. What I absolutely hated about this particular red herring is that it triggered an incredibly stupid subplot regarding Eve and Roarke's relationship. 

Jess uses his magic music console to mind-control Roarke into a state that drives him to drag Eve to a closet in his castle during a party and rape her. I'm not using the word "rape" for dramatic effect; Roarke himself calls it rape, though Eve disagrees with him. And even that wouldn't trouble me much because even in real life, people can't bring themselves to agree on what rape is. What bothers me is that Eve is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and incest, and much of her backstory is about dealing with the trauma she suffered at her abusive father's hands. 

Considering her previous characterization, I argue that Eve would have reacted much more severely and negatively when her husband dragged her to a closet and raped her. But, even while it's happening, Eve reads as mostly annoyed and embarrassed. In fact, she seems more upset when she realizes, a few moments afterwards, that Roarke wasn't acting of his own volition. That part would actually work for me since Eve loves Roarke, and sometimes the things that hurt our loved ones hurt us more than the things that hurt us. Sadly, I can't get past how jarring the first half of the scene was. 

To Robb's credit, the rape is not just forgotten after it's over. Throughout the rest of the book, Eve is concerned that her anger towards Jess is clouding her judgment and affecting her work. But the actual event where Roarke assaults her, though under the influence of sci-fi magic, is not directly addressed again. Eve has no instinctive fear of physical contact with him, and she doesn't have nightmares about mind-controlled Roarke like she does of her psychotic father. Roarke himself seems to more-or-less get over what happened after he tortures Jess for a little bit and then helps send him to jail. This incident is never mentioned again in any other book.

So I'm left wondering, "what was the point of that?" 

This book could've worked just as well without the red herring. The original murder mystery about a killer videogame driving happy, successful people to euphoric suicide was interesting all on its own, and there was little connection between the red herring and the actual killer. If I didn't know any better, I'd say Robb wanted an extra fifty pages to this book, or just an excuse to launch Mavis' pop stardom success. Whatever the goal was, there must have been a better way to accomplish it.