Purity in Death

Purity in Death is a 2002 crime novel by J. D. Robb, the pen name for Nora Roberts. The book is part of the ongoing In Death series, which includes more than 50 titles. The story follows futuristic police lieutenant Eve Dallas, who solves complex crimes in a dense urban dystopia. At the beginning of the book, Eve’s husband theorizes that a computer virus can only infect other machines, but never the one who controls the computer itself. This philosophy is challenged when a supercomputer manages to generate a virus that kills organic life by destroying all cognitive functions. Eve sets out to find the virus’s source and bring whoever it is to justice.

The novel begins in the year 2059. Eve is getting ready for an evening party along with her exorbitantly wealthy husband, Roarke. Reluctant to attend the pretentious event, she is excited to learn about a mysterious case in the city. A man named Louie Cogburn has just been killed by her colleague, Officer Troy Trueheart, in a standoff. The circumstances of Louie’s death are anything but ordinary. The problem started when Louie spent three days isolated in his home, unable to leave his computer. Overcome by terrible migraine-like symptoms, he agonized in solitude, feeling as if someone was driving a drill into his head.

Eventually, an innocent neighbor named Ralph Wooster knocked on Louie’s door to ask him to turn down his music. Louie opened the door with a murderous expression and killed Ralph with a baseball bat. Next, Louie went after Ralph’s girlfriend, Suzanne. In response, the cops were called. Louie lunged with the baseball bat at the first one who showed up at his door, and was consequently shot and killed instantly.



Eve investigates Louie’s death and soon finds that the cause of his strange symptoms is not a neurological illness, as the investigators initially assumed. Rather, it is a ring of terrorist vigilantes called the Purity Seekers who are also tech prodigies. After a search of Louie’s apartment, the police find that he ran a drug trafficking ring that supplied school kids with two dangerous drugs called Jazz and Zoner. The vigilantes have started acting as judge, jury, and executioner for people who engage in crime, especially pedophilia and drug trafficking. Whenever they kill a person, the vigilantes first hack into the target’s computer, bring them into a trance, then induce mental agony. Once the victim dies, the terrorists leave their calling card: a message on the computer screen reading “absolute purity achieved.”

Eve struggles to determine the terrorists’ exact location or ultimate intentions. The suspects range from disillusioned employees of the justice system to people who suffered childhood abuse and now want to commit vengeance on a mass scale. Eve struggles with her automatic empathy for the victims of child abuse, having been abused herself as kid.

The string of crime grows complicated when Eve’s colleague Holloway, a digital investigator, tries to track the origin of the message on the victim’s screen and inadvertently picks up a virus. Holloway holds his superior officer hostage and locks down the entire police office. The police bust their way in, and Eve manages to stick a tranquilizer into Holloway’s shoulder, disarming him. Nevertheless, he is shot and killed.



Successfully juggling the difficulties of her marriage with the details of the crime, Eve manages to both salvage her relationship and find the culprits, bringing an end to the vigilantes' violence. Purity in Death thus explores some of the emotional ties between marriage and career, reinterpreted through the conditions of a speculative fictional world rife with suspense and uncertainty.