New York city cops Eve and Peabody have to find out who killed twelve young girls and hid their bodies behind the walls of an old building. Eve's husband multi-billionaire businessman Roarke has recently bought an old building which used to function as a shelter for street children at some point of time in the past. On the first day of renovation, Roarke swings the inaugural blow to bring down the walls of the old building and discovers the bodies of 12 young girls concealed inside. Roarke informs his wife Lt. Eve Dallas of the situation.
Click here to see the rest of this review...
With the help of forensic anthropologist Dr. Garnet DeWinter and her assistant Emily, Eve and her partner Peabody are able to identify 11 of the 12 dead girls. All the girls are found to have died by drowning. The job of notifying the families of each of the girls falls to Eve and Peabody. Eve finds that many of the children who died were part of the Sanctuary, the shelter which had functioned out of the same building nearly 15 years ago.
Eve meets siblings Philadelphia Jones and Nashville Jones, the original founders of the Sanctuary, and finds that they are running a similar venture out of a new building now. During the course of the investigation, it is revealed that Philadelphia and Nash had another brother Monty who was killed in Africa by a lion while he was on a mission to that country.
One of the dead girls is Shelby, a known troublemaker who used to be an inmate at the Sanctuary. Shelby had been friends with almost all the other dead girls. Eve is stunned to realize that her friend Mavis, who had to live on the streets during her childhood due to her difficult circumstances at home, had also known many of the dead girls. New York City's finest cops have to find the murderer of 12 children, but are they too late to apprehend the real criminal?
Best part of story, including ending:
Concealed in Death is not one of the best books in the In Death series and I found it quite boring at some parts. The mystery was not gripping and it was just meandering along. The book places more emphasis on the different circumstances that each of the 12 dead girls came from. Still, it was good to find Eve finally free of all the nightmares of her childhood.
Best scene in story:
Eve goes to meet Delonna, one of the previous inmates of the Sanctuary, who may be able to help her solve the case. But she finds that Delonna has troubling nightmares that started after she escaped from the Sanctuary one night 15 years ago. Delonna has no memories of that night and Eve suspects that she has tried to block what had happened all those years ago. She is struck by the parallels between her and Delonna and asks her to contact Mira for help.
Opinion about the main character:
Eve has strict notions of what is right and what is wrong. When Mavis tells her that she used to run along with a gang of street children who were trained by a man to run cons, cheat people or pick pockets, her first impulse is to arrest the gang's mastermind. But Mavis makes her promise not to do that and Eve honours that promise.