On Manhattan's upper East Side, a woman lies dead at the bottom of a brownstone's basement steps, stripped of all her valuables. Most cops might call it a mugging gone wrong, but Lieutenant Eve Dallas knows better. A well-off accountant and a beloved wife and mother, Marta Dickenson doesn't seem the type to be on anyone's hit list. But when Eve and her partner, Peabody, find blood inside the brownstone, she knows Marta's murder is the work of a killer who's trained, yet not professional or smart enough to remove all the evidence. Eve learns that on the day of her murder Marta was assigned to work on three audits, and begins to suspect that she was killed to cover up fraudulent activity.