Newton police detective Rick Ballard tells Maura that he believes that a CEO of a pharmaceutical company is the murderer, due to the latter's obsessive lust over the deceased woman, Anna Leoni (on her driver's license, the name was recorded as Jessop).

The killer is revealed to be Maura's younger brother Samuel (their father, Elijah, had died prior to the murders for which Amalathea was caught—due to a gas station's security video).

Rizzoli then finds an old police report on a previous slaying involving 'Black Talons' and, seeing the endnotes, summons Frost to help protect Maura.

Carmen confesses to having killed Anna and shoots Maura, wounding her only to be fatally shot immediately afterward by Rizzoli and the parking lot's security guard.

Booklist called Body Double a "taut thriller",[1] Publishers Weekly said that the "startling twists, the revelation of ghoulishly practical motives and a nail biting finale make this Gerritsen's best to date".

[2] Entertainment Weekly was not as impressed, saying that "the face-offs between Isles and her killer mom — which should have smacked of The Silence of the Lambs — fall flat.