Origin in Death by Nora Roberts (2005, Abridged, Compact Disc)

While Nora Roberts (aka J.D. Robb) seems to be paling a bit in her romance novel genre, the In Death series is getting better and better with each subsequent book.

Origin in Death starts with a bang: The ugly, possibly professional murder of a Nobel Prize winning doctor and scientist, Dr. Icove, he of the famed Icove Center, plastic surgery hub for the rich and famous. Before the blood is even dry, so to speak, Icove's son, who co-runs the tony clinic, is murdered as well, in the same way.

It's up to Eve, cop extraordinaire, to get to the bottom of the murders and figure out what's behind the "too perfect" profiles of the two Icoves and their clinic. What she finds is beyond human imagination, even in the year 2059, where this novel takes place.

Along the way, Eve's husband Roarke painfully tries to plan a Thanksgiving dinner/reunion for his recently discovered huge Irish family; Mavis, near the end of her pregnancy, reminds a horrified Eve and Roarke that they are to be birth coaches, and Peabody and McNabb continue to cohabit in bliss. There are some really funny moments in this book, and the mystery and eventual solution are "prime," as McNabb would say. A winner!