Conspiracy in Death

Detective Eve Dallas of the New York police takes on a case in which the first victim is a homeless man. His body shows no bruises and no sign of a struggle. Where his heart should be, there is a fist-sized hole cut with laser precision.

The killing has the exactness of surgery, and the pattern points to a serial killer who targets the most vulnerable people on the city streets. Eve has seen a great deal of violence, yet what one person does to another never becomes routine for her. As she works the case, the killer draws her into a game of cat and mouse.

Trouble also comes from inside her own department. An internal investigation turns its attention to Eve herself. By her own reckoning she has done nothing wrong beyond irritating some fellow cops who have connections in high places.

That leaves her pulled two ways: the hunt for a murderer on one side, the effort to protect her career on the other. This is the ninth book in the In Death series, a futuristic police procedural with a killer who treats lives as his to hold or end.