“Eve wasn’t sure what it said about her that she was more comfortable in the morgue than in a baby boutique. And she didn’t actually care.” - Born in Death[1]
Plot 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 left over to put together a baby shower for her best friend Mavis, but that’s supposedly what friends are for. Now Mavis needs another favor. 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. 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 realizes 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.
Map[]
Please reference the Born in Death Map for locations or approximate locations of sites listed here.
Spoiler warning! This article contains plot details about an upcoming episode. |
Timeline[]
Approximate Story Start Date: January, 2060
Day -1 – Monday[]
- 12:30 pm – Madeline Bullock, Winfield Chase, and Walter Cavendish meet for lunch, and discuss killing Natalie Copperfield
- Sometime either Monday evening or Tuesday morning – Someone approaches Natalie Copperfield with an offer if she will look the other way on what she found. She asks for 48 hours to think it over.
Day 0 – Tuesday[]
(before murders) (night)
Chapter 1[]
- Eve and Roarke join Mavis and Leonardo for birthing class
- Eve and Roarke meet Tandy Willowby, another expectant mother
- Eve, Roarke, Tandy, Mavis, and Leonardo have dinner
- Eve and Roarke take Tandy home
- Randall Sloan goes with Sasha Zinka and Lola Warfield to dinner and a club
- Mr. and Mrs. Robert Kraus, Madeline Bullock, and Winfield Chase have dinner and play cards until midnight
Day 1 – Wednesday, Day of Murders[]
(early morning)
- Winfield Chase goes to Randall Sloan’s parking garage and takes his car to Natalie Copperfield’s apartment
- Winfield Chase kills Natalie Copperfield
- Winfield Chase drives to Bick Byson’s residence
- Winfield Chase kills Bick Byson
- Winfield Chase returns Randall Sloan’s car to its parking spot, turned the wrong way around
- Palma Copperfield finds Natalie Copperfield’s body, calls emergency
- Eve is dispatched to Natalie Copperfield's apartment
- Eve arrives
- Peabody arrives
Chapter 2[]
- Eve processes and records scene
(morning)
- Eve arrives at Cop Central
- Baxter reports having dated Palma Copperfield
- Baxter helps calm Palma as Eve interviews her
- Contact with Sloan, Myers, and Kraus accounting firm, determine Byson has not come in for work
- Eve and Peabody go to Byson’s loft
- Eve and Peabody discover Bick Byson’s body
Chapter 3[]
- Eve and Peabody process the Byson murder scene
- Eve and Peabody go to Sloan, Myers, and Kraus
- Eve and Peabody have an informal interview with Cara Greene (Natalie’s supervisor)
- Eve and Peabody have an informal interview with Myra Lovitz (Bick’s supervisor)
- Eve requests a warrant for Sloan, Myers, and Kraus
- Eve and Peabody go to the White Stork for a shower present
(afternoon)
Chapter 4[]
- Eve visits the morgue for more information about Byson and Copperfield deaths
- Sloan, Myers, and Kraus lawyers fight the warrant
- Eve reviews scene reports
- Eve starts running firm members
- Peabody starts interviewing/running neighbors
- Eve takes a trip to EDD, listens to recovered ’link transmissions
- Eve visits lab, confirms that the duct tape from each murder came from the same roll
(evening)
- Eve contacts APA Reo, raises hell about warrant being delayed
- Eve goes home
Chapter 5[]
- Eve has dinner with Roarke in the conservatory, vents a while
- Eve sets up her office board
- Sleep
Day 2 – Thursday[]
(morning)
- Roarke has some information abut Sloan, Myers, and Kraus for Eve
- Warrant for Sloan, Myers, and Kraus comes through
- Eve, Peabody, and McNab go to Sloan, Myers, and Kraus with uniforms to collect evidence
- Peabody and McNab pack up Copperfield's office
- Eve meets Robert Kraus
- Eve meets Carl Myers and Jacob Sloan, gets their alibis for Tuesday night/Wednesday morning
- Peabody, McNab, and uniforms pack up Byson's office
Chapter 6[]
- Eve informally interviews Jake Sloan (grandson)
- Eve meets Randall Sloan
- Eve informally interviews Sarajane Bloomdale
- Peabody informally interviews Lilah Grove
(afternoon)
- Eve re-interviews Cara Greene (Natalie’s supervisor)
- Eve re-interviews Lilah Grove (Bick’s flirty co-worker)
- Eve interviews Jake Sloan’s girlfriend, Rochelle Delay, at the Palace
- Eve and Peabody return to Central
Chapter 7[]
- Peabody starts working through evidence collected that day
- Eve has a very insulting meeting with Commander Jack Whitney
- McNab gives status to Peabody
- Eve comes back from meeting, bites off heads
- Eve goes to EDD, bites off McNab’s head
- Eve talks to Feeney, calms down
- Eve returns to working on files and evidence
(evening)
- 6 pm ish – Tandy kidnapped by Madeline Bullock
- Eve attempts to contact Cara Greene again
- Eve faces off with Roarke about the Commander’s concerns
- Roarke bites Eve’s head off, tells Eve to hand off the case
Chapter 8[]
- Eve and Roarke argue
- Eve and Roarke cool off
- Co-ed shower
- Roarke comes up with the idea of a contract
- Roarke looks at client list
- Eve reviews her reports and notes
- Peabody calls with her idea about using the rocker as a throne at the shower and sleeping over Friday night
- sleep
Day 3 – Friday[]
(morning)
Chapter 9[]
- Eve and Roarke go to Central
- Roarke goes to Whitney with his expert consultant contract
- Whitney arranges to have Legal to review it, then Chief Tibble
- Eve has a consult with Dr. Mira
- Eve and Peabody informally interview Sasha Zinka and Lola Warfield to confirm alibis
- Eve and Peabody travel to Stuben, Robbins, Cavendish, and Mull
- Eve and Peabody meet Ellyn Bruberry
Chapter 10[]
- Eve and Peabody informally interview Walter Cavendish
- Eve and Peabody informally interview Ellyn Bruberry
- Eve and Peabody first suspect Cavendish is part of the murders
- Informal interview with Lordes C. McDermott
(afternoon)
- The rocker from White Stork arrives – banter with Summerset
- Back to Central
- Copperfield/Byson memorial service
(evening)
- Eve chats with Roarke in her office
- Eve and Roarke pick up a tiara and scepter for Mavis’s shower
- Eve and Roarke have dinner at an Italian restaurant
- Peabody and McNab arrive at Roarke’s house, start decorating for the shower
- Winfield Chase drugs and kills Randall Sloan at Sloan’s home
- Winfield Chase removes discs from Randall Sloan’s security system, creates a suicide note, and removes hidden cache of discs
- Eve runs Cavendish and Bruberry background checks
- Eve checks out decorations (Peabody forces her to)
- sleep
Day 4 – Saturday[]
(morning)
Chapter 11[]
- workout
- Summerset leaves for the day
- Eve starts running scenarios
- Peabody insists that Eve stops working and prepares for the shower
- Mavis and Leonardo arrive
(Afternoon)
- Boys leave
- Shower guests arrive
- Nadine Furst asks Eve to help her out with a monthly interview segment on her upcoming show, Now
- Eve puts Nadine on the scent of Cavendish and the Bullock Foundation
- Eve avoids playing baby shower games, but has to run them instead
- Mavis first mentions that Tandy is not there
- Mavis opens her gifts
- Mavis gets the rocker
- Party disperses
(evening)
- Boys return and start loading gifts into a car to take back to Mavis and Leonardo’s
Chapter 12[]
- Eve takes Mavis to Tandy’s apartment
- Mavis and Eve enter Tandy’s apartment with Eve’s master
- Eve starts informally interviewing Tandy’s neighbors, determines no one has seen her since Thursday morning
- Eve puts Peabody on searching for like crimes and talking to Mavis about baby’s father
- Eve and Roarke go to Central
Chapter 13[]
- Eve talks to Lieutenant Jaye Smith, Missing Persons Unit
- Jaye and Eve come to an agreement on how to handle the Tandy Willowby case
- Eve and Roarke interview the bus driver about Tandy
(night)
- Eve walks the route Tandy would probably have taken
- Eve locates the parking lot closest to the route
- Eve runs background check on Tandy
- Eve calls lot security, gets owner’s contact information
- Eve threatens the owner to provide security discs for when Tandy disappeared
- Eve speaks to Tandy’s boss and midwife about people who would want the baby, about the father
Day 5 – Sunday[]
(early morning)
Chapter 14[]
- Eve studies like crimes
- Sex
- Eve contacts Tandy’s half-sister, Briar Rose Marrow, in England
- Eve gets the name of Tandy’s baby-daddy, Aaron Applebee
- Eve runs background on Aaron Applebee, tries to make contact
- Eve leaves message for Inspector Triveti in Italy about like crimes (Sophia Belego)
- Eve speaks to Triveti about Belego case
- Eve leaves another message for Applebee
- sleep
Chapter 15[]
(morning)
- breakfast
- Roarke and Eve discuss numbers on one of the accounts and like cases
- Eve brings in Peabody and McNab
- Eve learns security discs from garage are wiped
- Leonardo and Mavis arrive to help
- Mavis flips out a little
- Mavis works on timeline, Leonardo gets coffee
- Eve makes contact with Aaron Applebee
- Eve learns about Tandy originally going to an adoption agency
- Peabody and McNab arrive
- McNab goes to work with Roarke
- Mavis and Leonardo go to work on an adoption agency list in London
- Peabody starts looking into Sophia Belego possibly pursuing adoption
- Eve finds another like crime: Emily Jones
- Eve confirms Emily Jones looked into adoption
- Peabody gets confirmation about Sophia Belego talking with adoption agencies
Chapter 16[]
- Roarke and McNab present their financial findings
- Eve notes that the Stubens, Robbins, Cavendish, and Mull file has been edited
- Team detects money laundering in a file that has been labeled differently (Bullock Foundation)
- Eve and Roarke go to Robert Kraus’s home, informally interview wife about Tuesday night
(afternoon)
- Eve and Roarke go to the golf course, informal interview with Kraus
- Eve learns that Randall Sloan handles the Bullock Foundation account
- Eve tries to contact Madeline Bullock
- Eve taps Feeney to get Madeline Bullock’s private number
- Eve and Roarke go to Randall Sloan’s house
- Eve and Roarke meet Jake and Rochelle
- Eve and Jake discover Randall's body
Chapter 17[]
- Eve discovers Randall’s suicide note
- Eve discusses Randall’s habits and actions with Jake
- Feeney gets Bullock’s phone number for Eve
- Eve believes Randall may have hidden an extra copy of discs as “insurance”
- Eve and Roarke head home
- sleep
- Eve assigns Peabody and McNab to looking over Randall Sloan’s place, fills them in on current events
- Everyone eats
- Eve tags Baxter to investigate Randall Sloan’s vehicles
Chapter 18[]
- Mavis and Leonardo look over a list of adoption agencies
- Eve gets Madeline Bullock’s New York house address
(night)
- Leonardo asks if he and Mavis can stay the night
- Eve and Roarke make a trip to see Madeline Bullock
- Eve tells Madeline Bullock about Sloan’s death (some fine acting here)
- Eve requests a warrant for DNA sample on Chase
- Eve and Roarke arrive back at home
- Peabody and McNab find an additional stash of discs at Randall Sloan’s
Chapter 19[]
- Baxter and Trueheart come in and report on Randall’s vehicle; it was moved Tuesday night or Wednesday morning
- Peabody and McNab arrive with Sloan’s private discs
- Booster drinks all around
- Eve and Roarke look through Sloan’s private discs, find the Sunday’s Child account details
- Eve and Peabody make the connection from Sunday’s Child to Tandy’s disappearance
- Eve has Roarke look for patterns in Sloan’s private discs involving Sunday’s Child
- Eve gets the connection to Emily Jones and Sophia Belego
- Trueheart gets the doctor connection
- Eve calls Reo asking for a search & seizure warrant for Madeline Bullock’s house
- Eve starts putting together the operation
Day 6 – Monday[]
(early morning)
- Eve and team go to the Bullock house
- McNab scans the house for people, discovers a cold room
- Reo comes through with the warrant
- Eve has Reo contact Jaye Smith
- Roarke kills the security
- Roarke breaks in the house, team goes in
- Eve and Baxter arrest Chase and Bullock
Chapter 20[]
- Peabody and Trueheart disable the medical droid
- Roarke opens the cold room
- Eve rescues Tandy
- Eve orders Cavendish in, requests a warrant to bring in Bruberry
- Eve and Roarke take Tandy to their house
- sleep
(morning)
- Eve talks to Whitney
- Eve goes into formal interview with Walter Cavendish
- Eve makes a deal with Cavendish
- Eve goes into formal interview with Ellen Bruberry
- Dr. Letitia Brownburn (Sunday’s Child OB/partner) gets arrested in London
- Sunday’s Child officially shut down
- Bruberry breaks in interview
- Eve starts to work on Winfield Chase in interview with Baxter
- Chase'’s lawyer presents the statement about Tandy’s kidnapping
- Eve and Baxter taunt Chase into talking
- Chase speaks about Sunday’s Child contracts
- Chase admits to three murders, dismisses all lawyers, and comes clean
Chapter 21[]
- Eve talks to Jacob Sloan
- Eve begins her interview with Madeline Bullock
- Bullock threatens to call in favors from high-ranking officials
- Eve ends interview
- Eve finishes up reports
(evening)
- Eve goes home
- Tandy goes into labor
- Mavis admits she’s in labor
- Tandy contacts Aaron Applebee
- Summerset contacts midwife
- Eve, Summerset, and Roarke travel with Mavis, Leonardo, and Tandy to the birthing center
- Peabody and McNab go to Mavis’s and Tandy’s to pick up baby bags
- Eve, Roarke, Summerset, Leonardo, Mavis, and Tandy arrive at the birthing center
Chapter 22[]
- Aaron Applebee arrives at birthing center
- Mavis decides to get married RIGHT NOW!
- Eve calls the mayor to arrange a marriage license
- Roarke finds a priest
- Peabody and McNab arrive with the baby bags
- Peabody and McNab start alerting everyone about the wedding
- Trina arrives to do Mavis’s hair
- Everyone arrives for the wedding
- Summerset lends Mavis his wedding ring until she can get her own
- Tandy’s baby arrives
- Eve meets Tandy’s son, Quentin Dallas Applebee
- Whitney calls with news that Winfield Chase killed Madeline Bullock
- Mavis and Dallas talk
- Mavis’s baby, Bella Eve, arrives
Day 7 – Tuesday[]
(morning)
- Eve and Roarke go home.
Character List[]
List of Main Characters Appearing in this Book[]
List of Secondary Characters Appearing in this Book[]
- David Baxter
- Ryan Feeney
- Mavis Freestone
- Nadine Furst
- Galahad
- Leonardo
- Ian McNab
- Charlotte Mira
- Morris
- Delia Peabody
- Lawrence Summerset
- Troy Trueheart
- Jack Whitney
List of Recurring Characters Appearing or Mentioned in this Book[]
List of Minor Characters Appearing in this Book[]
- Aaron Applebee
- Sarajane Bloomdale
- Mr. Braunstein
- Liane Brosh
- Ellyn Bruberry
- Madeline Bullock
- Walter Cavendish
- Winfield Chase
- Palma Copperfield
- Rochelle DeLay
- Dolly
- Matt Goodwin
- Lilah Grove
- Cara Greene
- Robert Kraus
- Myra Lovitz
- Briar Rose Marrow
- Lordes C. McDermott
- Carl Myers
- Ms. Pason
- Max Patrone
- Zeela Patrone
- Jacob Sloan
- Jake Sloan
- Randall Sloan
- Lieutenant Jaye Smith
- Randa Tillas
- Inspector Triveti
- Lola Warfield
- Tandy Willowby
- Gracie York
- Sasha Zinka
List of Peripheral Characters Appearing or Mentioned in this Book[]
- Quentin Dallas Applebee
- Sophia Belego
- Dr. Leticia Brownburn
- Sam Bullock
- Bick Byson
- Maryanna Clover
- Natalie Copperfield
- Crissy
- Chef DeLay
- Elise Helbringer
- Karl Helbringer
- Sybil Hopson
- Hunt
- Emily Jones
- Anna Kerlinko
- Mae
- Maize
- Candide Marrow
- Miles McDermott
- Carl Myers, Sr.
- Derrick Newman
- Opal
- Michael Pauli
- Quinn
- Ricko
- Reece Russo
- Samuel Russo
- Shirley
- Titania
- Richard Troy
- Wiley
- Annalee Willowby
- Nigel Willowby
- Yon
Deaths[]
Victim | Cause of Death | Weapon | Perpetrator |
---|---|---|---|
Sophia Belego (prebook) | unknown | unknown | Winfield Chase on orders of Madeline Bullock |
Emily Jones (prebook) | head trauma | ||
Natalie Copperfield | strangulation after torture | manual | |
Bick Byson | |||
Randall Sloan | hanging | tranquilized then hanged | |
Madeline Bullock | broken neck | manual | Winfield Chase |
Trivia[]
- Mavis gives birth to “Bella Eve”
Other Covers[]
Additional covers here
US Paperback edition cover | UK edition cover | French edition cover | German Book Club edition cover | Hungarian edition cover | Brilliance Audio unabridged edition cover |
US Paperback edition | UK edition cover | French edition cover | DE Book Club edition cover | Hungarian edition cover | Brilliance Audio unabridged edition cover |
YANNIs[]
- Madeline Bullock’s age:
- She married her first husband at twenty-two; lost her second husband eight years ago when she was forty-six. If he died eight years ago, she would be fifty-four today. “Bullock, Sam, died at the age of one-twelve. They’d been married five years. She was forty-six.”[2] If her son is thirty-eight[3], she would have had to have had her son, Winfield Chase, at the age of sixteen
- Unless she married at forty-six, her husband died when she was fifty-one and, eight years later, is now fifty-nine... which would have her having her son at the age of twenty-one give or take some months and, possibly, had her child before she married....
- Number of hours Tandy Willowby was missing:
- “No one’s seen her, as far as we can tell, since Thursday, at around six o’clock... four forty-eight on a bloody Sunday morning...” Eve said “Tandy was seventy-one hours missing”[4]
- Thursday 6:00 p.m. to Sunday 4:48 a.m. = roughly 58 hours and 48 minutes missing, not seventy-one hours
- Winfield Chase’s age:
- Audio Error: Text: “Whitney made a direct statement.” Audio: “Feeney made a direct statement.” This was when Eve was talking to Feeney about Whitney’s comments about Roarke having access to the data from Sloan, Myers, and Kraus in Chapter 7.
- While not exactly a YANNI, when Peabody told Eve about Lilah Grove wearing Do Me perfume, she said “I like to go in and get sprayed with it when I troll the higher-end department stores.” Eve replied, “You’re the one?” meaning, “the one person in the known universe who likes to get sprayed by those spritz guerillas.”[6] Eve already knew this from Holiday in Death, when Peabody allowed herself to be sprayed with Do Me perfume at Bloomingdale’s, so Eve already knew that about her partner.[7]
Footnotes[]
- ↑ Born in Death, Chapter 4
- ↑ Born in Death (ISBN 978-0-425-21568-5), pp. 90-91
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Born in Death (ISBN 978-0-425-21568-5), p. 91
- ↑ Born in Death (ISBN 978-0-425-21568-5), pp. 189, 202-203, 213-214
- ↑ Born in Death (ISBN 978-0-425-21568-5), p. 278
- ↑ Born in Death (ISBN 978-0-425-21568-5), pp. 87-88
- ↑ Holiday in Death (ISBN 0-425-16371-7), p. 36