The death of history teacher Craig Foster devastated his young wife, whod sent him off to work that morning with a lovingly packed lunch. It shocked his colleagues at the Upper West Side private school. And as for the ten-year-old girls who found him in his classroom in a pool of bodily fluids, they may have been traumatized for life. Lieutenant Eve Dallas, of course, is more hardened to murder cases. And this is clearly a murder case. That lovingly packed lunch was tainted with deadly ricin. And Mr. Fosters colleagues, shocked as they may be, have some shocking secrets of their own. Its Eves job to get a feel for all the potential suspects, and find out why someone would have done this to a man who seemed so inoffensive, so pleasantso innocent. Now Magdelana Percell theres someone Eve can picture as a murder victim. Possibly at Eves own hands. The slinky blonde - an old flame of her billionaire husband, Roarke, from his days on the wrong side of the law has turned up in New York, and shes anything but innocent. Unfortunately, Roarke seems blind to Magdelanas manipulation, but not to her shapely figure and flirtatious ways. And he insists that the occasional lunch or business meeting with her is nothing to worry aboutand none of Eves business. Eves so unnerved by the situation that she finds it hard to focus on the Foster case. Still, shell have to put aside her anger, jealousy, and heartbreak, for a while at least - because another man has just turned up dead, and the case is taking some strange turns and hitting some frustrating dead ends. Eve knows all too well that innocence can be a faade. Keeping that in mind may help her solve this case at last. But it may also tear apart her marriage.