Elsbeth Tascioni is an attorney from Chicago who has been sent to New York City to observe a department within the NYPD. She arrives the day the NYPD is investigating the apparent suicide of a wealthy heiress, Olivia Cherry.

The previous night, Olivia had gotten into an argument with her acting teacher, Alex Modarian, with whom she was having an affair. When he stopped casting her in lead roles, she threatened to expose their affair, ruining his career.

He responded by killing her in her apartment, staging the murder to look like a suicide.

At the crime scene, Elsbeth meets Officer Kaya Blanke, who takes her up to the apartment. There, Elsbeth investigates the scene and asks questions of the lead detective. She surmises that the suicide was actually a murderer. At the crime scene, she also meets Alex and becomes immediately suspicious of him.

Elsbeth goes to Alex’s office the next day to question him. She mentions some evidence she found, such as a man’s deodorant in Olivia’s bathroom and a grammar issue in her suicide texts.

Later, Elsbeth also discovers that Alex had a pattern of having affairs with his students. Armed with this evidence, she brings her suspicions to the Captain of the NYPD, Captain Wagner.

However, Alex has devised a plan to frame his TA, who is arrested and questioned. In a final effort to get to the bottom of the case, Elsbeth has one more conversation with Alex, where she shares that she believes a device was used to send texts from Olivia’s phone.

Alex has the device and scrambles to hide it in his TA’s belongings. He’s caught in the act and arrested. Elsbeth has proved her worth to the NYPD.