[1] Following the events in Origin in Death, Lt. Eve Dallas only wants a break as Christmas nears, but her past is coming back to haunt her.

A television news special about her and her husband Roarke's involvement in the destruction of the Icove center airs on national television, and in Texas, catches the eye of Trudy Lombard, who promptly comes to New York City with her son and her daughter-in-law.

Eve was taken in by Lombard as a foster child after she killed her father.

Lombard was an abusive woman, who often made Eve go without food, clean the floors with a toothbrush, locked her in her bed room without light, and scrubbed her skin raw in ice cold baths, all the time telling her she deserved it because she was a 'filthy' little girl who'd already 'engaged in sexual relations' (referring to the beatings and rape committed by Eve's father) before the age of ten.

However, Dallas does not believe it to be so clear a homicide, and while looking at all the former foster children taken in by Lombard, suspects Trudy Lombard's daughter in law, Zana Kline, who seems too innocent to have a hand in the murder; however, because there is no evidence pointing to her, Eve becomes extremely frustrated.