Are any of us really innocent when we get down to it?

3.5 stars

This is book 24 in the In Death series. I wouldn’t recommend starting with this one, although if you’re interested in plot summaries of earlier ones, I’ve reviewed most of the previous ones on the blog. My experience is that either you really like these books, or you don’t. There seems to be very little in-between.

Craig Foster is planning a history quiz for his pupils at a New York private school while having lunch, and dies horribly from ricin poisoning at his desk. The two schoolgirls who find his dead body are deeply traumatised. Lieutenant Eve Dallas and her partner Delia Peabody have to figure out who could possibly have wanted the young and seemingly universally popular dead. As they start investigating the staff and various parents, they discover a number of juicy secrets that Foster may have been privy to, but none of them seem to be bad enough that someone would murder a man. Then a second body is found in the school, and the hunt for the killer has to be intensified.

It doesn’t help that Dallas’ attention is divided. Blonde bombshell Magdalena Purcell, one of Roarke’s former lovers, is certainly no innocent. Recently divorced, she’s back in town, allegedly seeking investment advice from her old friend, and Eve, who is normally never suffers from jealousy or doubts, is shaken to discover that this woman gets under her skin like no other. Roarke seems completely blind to the woman’s manipulation, and keeps getting more and more furious that Eve’s trust in him is waning. Yet Eve can’t rest easy, and as the sultry Magdalena keeps popping up, the tensions in her marriage keep rising. More here.