Innocent in Death

Book 28

Summary:

The phenomenal series set in a future New York City returns as NYPSD Lt. Eve Dallas hunts for the killer of a seemingly ordinary history teacher-and uncovers some extraordinary surprises. Craig Foster's death devastated his young wife, who'd sent him to work that day with a lovingly packed lunch. It shocked his colleagues at the private school, too, and as for the ten-year-old girls who found him in his classroom in a pool of bodily fluids-they may have been traumatized for life.

Eve soon determines that Foster's homemade lunch was tainted with deadly ricin, and that Mr. Foster's colleagues have some startling secrets of their own. It's Eve's job to sort it out-and discover why someone would have done this to a man who seemed so inoffensive, so pleasant . . . so innocent.

Now Magdalena Percell . . . there's someone Eve can picture as a murder victim. Possibly at Eve's own hands. The slinky blonde-an old flame of her billionaire husband, Roarke-has arrived in New York, and she's anything but innocent. Roarke seems blind to Magdalena's manipulation, and he insists that the occasional lunch or business meeting with her is nothing to worry about . . . and none of Eve's business. Eve's so unnerved by the situation that she finds it hard to focus on her case. Still, she'll have to put aside her feelings, for a while at least-because another man has just turned up dead.

Eve knows all too well that innocence can be a facade. Keeping that in mind may help her solve this case at last. But it may also tear apart her marriage.

--The Penguin Group

Born in Death

Book 27

Summary:

Eve Dallas has a grisly double homicide to solve when two young lovers - both employees of the same prestigious accounting firm - are brutally killed on the same night. It doesn't leave Eve a lot of time leftover to put together a baby shower for her best-friend Mavis, but that's supposedly what friends are for. Now Mavis needs another favour. Tandy Willowby, one of the mothers-to-be in Mavis's birthing class, didn't show up for the shower. Having only recently arrived from London, Tandy has few friends in New York and no family - and she was really looking forward to the party. And when Eve enters Tandy's apartment and finds a gift for Mavis wrapped and ready on the table - and a packed bag for the hospital still on the floor next to it - she realises something is wrong. Normally, such a case would be turned over to Missing Persons. But Mavis asks for Eve's help - and she can't say no. She'll have to track Tandy down while simultaneously investigating the deals and double-crosses hidden in the files of some of the city's richest and most secretive citizens, in a race against this particularly vicious killer.

Memory in Death

Book 25

Summary:

Eve Dallas is one tough cop. She's got no problem dealing with a holiday reveler in a red suit who plunges thirty-seven stories and gives new meaning to the term "sidewalk Santa." But when she gets back to the station and Trudy Lombard shows up, it's all Eve can do to hold it together. Instantly, she's plunged back into the past, to the days when she was a vulnerable, traumatized girl - trapped in foster care with the twisted woman who now sits in front of her, smiling.

Trudy claims she just wanted to see how Eve was doing. But Eve's husband, Roarke, suspects otherwise - and his suspicions prove correct when Trudy arrives at his office demanding money in exchange for keeping the ugly details of his wife's childhood a secret. Barely restraining himself, Roarke shows her the door - and makes it clear that she'd be wise to get out of New York and never bother him or his wife again.

But just a few days later, Trudy's found on the floor of her hotel room, a mess of bruises and blood. A cop to the core, Eve is determined to solve the case, if only for the sake of Trudy's bereaved son. Unfortunately, Eve is not the only one to have suffered at this woman's hands, and she and Roarke will follow a circuitous, dangerous path to find out who turned this victimizer into a victim.

--The Penguin Group

Origin in Death

Book 24

Summary:

New York police lieutenant Eve Dallas and her partner Peabody enter the hallowed halls of the Wilfred B. Icove Center for Reconstructive and Cosmetic Surgery on an open and shut case of self-defense. But before they can leave they are called to another crime scene. Dr. Wilfred B. Icove himself has been found dead in his office - murdered in a chillingly efficient manner: one swift stab to the heart. Struck by the immaculate condition of the crime scene, Dallas suspects a professional killing. Security discs show a stunningly beautiful woman calmly entering and leaving the building - the good doctor's final appointment. Known as "Dr. Perfect," the saintly Icove devoted his life to his family and his work. His record is clean. - Too clean for Dallas. She knows he was hiding something and suspects that his son - and successor - knows what it is. Then, like father like son, the young Dr. Icove is killed...with the same deadly precision. But who is the mystery woman - and what was her relationship with the good doctors? With her husband, Roarke, working behind the scenes, Dallas follows her darkest instincts into the Icoves' pasts. And what she discovers are men driven to create perfection - playing fast and loose with the laws of nature, the limits of science, and the morals of humanity...

-- Copyright © The Penguin Group

Survivor in Death

Book 23

Summary:

No affairs. No criminal connections. No DNA. No clues. Eve Dallas may be the best cop in the city - not to mention having the lavish resources of her husband Roarke at her disposal - but the Swisher case has her baffled. The family members were murdered in their beds with brutal, military precision. The state-of-the-art security was breached, and the killers used night vision to find their way through the cozy middle-class house. Clearly, Dallas is dealing with pros. The only mistake they made was to overlook the nine-year-old girl cowering in the dark in the kitchen. . .

Now Nixie Swisher is an orphan - and the sole eyewitness to a seemingly inexplicable crime. Kids are not Dallas's strong suit. But Nixie needs a safe place to stay, and Dallas needs to solve this case. Not only because of the promise she made to Nixie. Not only for the cause of justice. But also to put to rest some of her own darkest memories - and deepest fears. With her partner Peabody on the job, and watching her back - and with Roarke providing the kind of help only he can give - Lieutenant Eve Dallas is running after shadows, and dead-set on finding out who's behind them.

--Penguin Group

Visions in Death

Book 22

Summary:

On one of the city's hottest nights, New York Police Lieutenant Eve Dallas is sent to Central Park - and into a hellish new investigation. The victim is found on the rocks, just above the still, dark water of The Lake in Central Park. Around her neck is a single red ribbon. Her hands are posed, as if in prayer. But it is the eyes -removed with such precision, as if done by the careful hand of a surgeon - that have Dallas most alarmed.

As more bodies turn up, each with the same defining scars, Eve is frantic for answers. Against her instincts, she accepts help from a psychic who offers one vision after another - each with shockingly accurate details of the murders. And when partner and friend Peabody is badly injured after escaping an attack, the stakes are raised. Are the eyes a symbol? A twisted religious ritual? A souvenir? With help from her husband, Roarke, Dallas must uncover the killer's motivation before another vision becomes another nightmare...

Divided in Death

Book 21

Summary:

The year is 2059. It is a future in which technology and humanity collide, and a new computer virus has become the latest form of terrorism.

Reva Ewing, a former member of the Secret Service, a security specialist for Roarke Enterprises, is a prime suspect in a double homicide. She had every reason to want to kill her husband, the renowned artist Blair Bissel. Not only was he having an affair, he was having it with her best friend. But Lieutenant Eve Dallas, who's on the case, believes Reva is innocent. Eve's instincts tell her that the murder scene looks too perfectly staged, the apparent answers too obvious. And when she digs for more, she discovers that at nearly the exact time a kitchen knife was jammed into the victim's ribs, the passcode to his art studio was changed - and all of the data on his computer deliberately corrupted.

To Roarke, it's the computer attack that poses the real threat. Signs show that this is the nightmare his company has secretly been preparing for. He and Reva have been under a code-red government contract to develop a program that would shield against a new breed of hackers, the Doomsday Group. These techno-terrorists with brilliant minds and plenty of financial backing hack into systems, steal data, and corrupt computer units on a large scale and kill anyone who gets too close.

Eve and Roarke must infiltrate an extraordinarily secretive government agency to expose the corruption at its core, before the virus spreads from one office to a corporation to the entire country.