Major Character Developments

Naked in Death: Book #1. Eve meets Roarke at a funeral, the murder for which he is a suspect. Roarke tells her he loves her near the end of this book, and she tells him that she was raped by her own father as a child and remembers nothing beyond that and being found in Dallas at age eight.

Glory in Death: Book #2. Introduces Officer Delia Peabody as a temporary assistant to Eve. Eve conflicts with Commander Whitney as he is friends with the victim's family, which also contains her prime witnesses. Eve struggles with her feelings for Roarke, refusing to let go of her apartment and staying there when he is on business trips rather than his home. Eventually, he gives her a diamond (which she wears under her clothing for the rest of the books) and she admits to him that she loves him. In order to help her move into his home, he replicates her old apartment in an adjoining suite to his office, giving her a luxurious home office that suits Eve perfectly. He also cuts off all the remaining illegal businesses he had, knowing they would make Eve unhappy. He proposes at the very end.

Immortal in Death: Book #3. Eve and Roarke are planning their wedding; meanwhile, Mavis is in love with a designer, Leonardo, who designs Eve's wedding gown. Mavis is the prime suspect in the book's title murder. Finally, Eve remembers the worst of the flashbacks, which show how she got away from her rapist-father: she killed him with a kitchen knife while he was raping her. Eve and Roarke inform Dr. Mira, who in turns tells Whitney about it, who states that he will not pursue the murder. They marry just after the book ends.

Rapture in Death: Book #4. Eve and Roarke come back from their honeymoon; Eve has Peabody become her permanent assistant. Mavis almost becomes the victim of a man looking for a con, but to make up for it, Roarke puts Mavis's audition tape (which is good on its own) through the appropriate steps, beginning Mavis's leap to stardom as a rock singer.

Ceremony in Death: Book #5. Eve is forced to pursue a case behind Feeney's back; he finds out, leading to a huge breakdown of relations. Roarke takes charge and tells Feeney that Eve thinks of him as a father, as her real father is the one who raped her as a child. Feeney forgives Eve, and Eve takes the blame for murdering the perpetrator in order to protect the real killer, Jamine Lingstrom, the brother of the first victim.

Vengeance in Death: Book #6. The murders in this book are revenge killings for murders that Roarke committed years ago, which ironically enough were revenge killings in themselves: he killed the men responsible for raping and murdering Marlena, Summerset's only child. Roarke was eighteen at the time of her death and had been taken in by Summerset six years prior. Eve struggles with the fact that her husband is far from just any criminal - he killed people, but for a reason she agrees with. Her car is also bombed (with her mere feet away) and Roarke experiences the momentary horror of thinking her dead. Eve also realizes why Summerset doesn't like her: she is nothing like Marlena, and he has always wanted someone like his dead daughter for Roarke. Despite this, she takes a hit meant for Summerset and sustains serious injuries. Detective Ian McNab is introduced. Richard and Elizabeth DeBlass (from Naked in Death) reappear to adopt a little boy found at one of the crime scenes.

Holiday in Death: Book #7. Eve and Roarke spend their first Christmas together; Delia is put in serious danger as she is captured and stripped naked by the killer. Delia and Charles Monroe start dating, though they're mostly very good friends.

Conspiracy in Death: Book #8. Eve is held under suspicion for killing a cop that hated her (mostly for being more successful than her), and her badge is taken away from her. Don Webster of Internal Affairs (the cop division that polices other cops) is introduced as a former lover of Eve's. Doctor Louise Dimatto is introduced; Officer Troy Trueheart is introduced.

Loyalty in Death: Book #9. Delia and Ian consummate their relationship; Eve and Roarke defeat the perpetrators and disable the bombs in the last terrorist target (the Statue of Liberty) together.

Witness in Death: Book #10. Eve throws together an impromptu seduction for Roarke, mostly because she feels it's nice to do something for him every once in awhile. Trueheart is seriously injured.

Judgment in Death: Book #11. The murderer of this book is a cop-turned cop-killer, who was in reality manipulated by a very dangerous criminal who used to have business ties with Roarke before the latter cut them off. Because of this, he intensely hates Roarke, and extends the hatred to Eve and tries to murder her several times. Eve and Roarke argue over how to handle the case - her legally, him illegally - and eventually he forces his way into the case, infuriating her. They eventually agree to disagree and capture the criminal with Roarke's plan at Roarke's club, but with her people on staff. Eve also has a flashback where she remembers that the criminal was once a business associate of her father's, whom her father stole money from before running off. In addition to this, Roarke has a fistfight with one of Eve's previous lovers, Don Webster, over Eve.

Betrayal in Death: Book #12. Ian, furious and jealous over Delia's relationship with Charles and ignorant of the fact that they're really just friends, breaks up with her. Roarke discovers that his good friend who shows up coincidentally in the book is actually there to steal from his hotel, but his friend dies saving his life at the end of the book. He has a meaningful conversation with this friend during which he says that they had once listed the one thing in the world they wanted most, and at that time, Roarke hadn't been able to narrow it down to any one thing. However, he has now: Eve. Roarke is also utilized as an expert civilian consultant for the first time.

Interlude in Death: Out of this World anthology, short story #2. Roake goes over an investigator's notes on his father and realizes that his father was in Dallas the same week Eve killed her father. Eve remembers that her father was in a good mood that week as he had a deal going; they realize their fathers probably knew each other and likely had business together, although they don't know what.

Seduction in Death: Book #13. Ian and Delia get back together; Charles Monroe meets and immediately starts a relationship with Dr. Louise Dimatto. Eve gets sick with a case of twenty-four hour flu and Summerset gives her the medication, and they have a short discussion over Roarke's constant worry for Eve. Roarke establishes an abuse shelter, Dochas ('hope' in Gaelic), for women and children, and contracts Louise to work there part-time.

Reunion in Death: Book #14. Eve and Roarke celebrate their one-year reunion; the killer is someone that Eve put away many years ago and came back explicitly to bother her. Delia's parents visit and a connection is established between Eve and Delia's mother, while Delia's father inadvertently intrudes on Eve's mind pyschically, realizing Eve was raped. Eve and Roarke make a trip to Dallas to talk with the killer's step-father, but while they are there, they visit the hotel where Eve killed her father. The trip is extremely difficult for them both as she relives the murder fully, but is able to talk about it to Dr. Mira. She also remembers that her father had never named her; additionally, she remembers why her father kept her: he was planning on prostituting her out to pedophiles, and she would in fact start working in Dallas.

Purity in Death: Book #15. Feeney is taken hostage and Eve is the one who gets him out. Jamie Lingstrom comes back to aid with the case; Ian is temporarily paralyzed; Roarke cheers the deaths of the victims as they were pedophiles and rapists, which Eve disagrees with. Delia is injured and Eve cries over it, shocking Ian. Mavis tells Eve that she's pregnant.

Portrait in Death: Book #16. Roarke thought previously to this that his mother was a disagreeable woman who was abusive and left him as a very small child, but he learns in his book (via a woman who works at his abuse shelter) that his mother was in fact Siobahn Brody, an eighteen year-old girl who loved him desperately. His father beat her to death and tossed her body in the river, then changed Roarke's birth records to appear as if Roarke was another woman's son and a year older. Roarke regrets deeply that he hadn't killed his father himself (he has no idea who it was), but Eve tells him that had he done so, he would not have felt any better - a powerful statement since Eve has done exactly what he regrets to no benefit. Eve also has a conversation with Summerset, who broke his leg at the beginning of the book, and she realizes that he is the one who killed Roarke's father in order to protect him. Roarke also visits his mother's twin sister and his extended family, instantly gaining an enormous extended family of farmers who live peacefully in Ireland.

Imitation in Death: Book #17. Eve has memories of her mother for the first real time (she previously remembered a woman she wasn't sure was her mother, but that memory proves here to be accurate), realizing that she was a prostitute and a drug addict who hated her child and was going along with the prostitution plans that Eve's father was setting up. Eve's mother's name was Stella; her father is referred to as Rick (his name is really Richard). Eve does not know if Stella is alive or dead, but she does realize that she has inherited her eye color from her mother. She keeps the memory from Roarke, though, afraid it will bring up bad memories of his own mother's tragic death, until late in the book. Eve also offhandedly comments about her experiences with a provider at the state school she attended when she was ten, who pinched Eve up and down the arms, leaving bruises. In addition, Delia finally takes the test to become a detective and comes in at #26 on the pass list; at the end of the book, Eve and Delia become partners.

Remember When: Book #18. A crossover book with Nora Roberts's typical hardcover romance, taking place after the first half ends in the early 2000's. Roarke and Eve track down the rest of the diamonds stolen in the first half of the book, which Roarke will subsequently legally buy (this purchase is fully revealed in Memory in Death).

Divided in Death: Book #19. Roarke discovers to his fury that the Homeland Security Organization (HSO) was keeping audio surveillance on Richard Troy, Eve's father, the week that he was in Dallas, as he was a sort of informant for them. The audio record is missing for the night of the murder, listed as malfunctioning, though more likely because they destroyed it. Roarke discovers that furthermore, they knew Troy was raping the minor in his keeping, but due to their operation going on at the time, HSO ordered that no course of action be taken and that they leave Eve there, whereupon she subsequently killed Troy herself. His sole desire upon discovering this information is to hunt and kill everyone who made and complied with the nonaction order; however, Eve asks him not to, and he complies because it will break their relationship otherwise. Additionally, the file states that Roarke's father was picked up at the airport by Troy; given that Troy had just gotten a deal to prostitute out his daughter (as discovered in Interlude in Death), the circle is fully realized. Richard Troy intended to sell his daughter to Patrick Roarke, Roarke's own father.

Visions in Death: Book #20. Delia is brutally injured by the murderer. Mavis and Leonardo inform Eve and Roarke that they want them to attend birth coaching classes.

Survivor in Death: Book #21. Eve takes in the sole surviving witness, a nine year-old girl, to the murder of her entire family, reminding Eve strongly of her own horrific childhood. The child establishes a deep bond to herself, Roarke, and Summerset, before being adopted by Richard and Elizabeth DeBlass (from Naked in Death).

Origin in Death: Book #22. An extremely high-profile case (even more so than the others) involving illegal human cloning that technically leads to the next book. Eve and Roarke also fight their way through the perpetrator's base at the end of the book, though both are badly injured.

Memory in Death: Book #23. Eve's foster mother sees her on the news about the previous case and comes to NYC to blackmail Roarke for money in exchange for not releasing details of Eve's childhood to the media. Eve is horrified to see this woman, who furthered Eve's hatred of cold showers (by making her take cold baths) and locked her in the dark.