Detective Fiction, Thrillers, Women Detectives - Fiction, Occupations - Fiction, Police Stories
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Overview
Life is getting back to normal for Dr. Sam Turner: She's at home in Wyoming with her husband, Derek, who works for the CIA (and who is her late husband's son), their own child, her herd of buffalo, and her job as Sheridan's medical examiner. There's work being done on the house, Derek is busily trying to find a nanny for the baby, the cops are still ticketing her at every opportunity, and the body of the teenage boy on the steel table in front of her has been ravaged by a killer that shouldn't exist. The cause of death is smallpox, and the disease was declared eradicated in 1977. Six hundred test tubes of the frozen virus were to be destroyed on December 31, 1993, although some scientists fought the order. Now Sam has to fight to be believed... and to discover who has unleashed the plague - again.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
A timely premise-the reemergence of smallpox-is ill-served by the abrasive sleuthing of Sheridan, Wyo., medical examiner Samantha Turner in her third appearance, following A Clinic for Murder. When a teenage boy dies after attending a conference with students from all over the world, Sam notes textbooks signs of smallpox, a disease wiped out in 1977, save for a few locked-up racks of frozen lab vials. The boy's body disappears, as does a second youngster, while Sam jousts with disbelieving representatives from the Center for Disease Control, the local police chief, who regularly (and legally) tows her car, and a paralyzing bout of her own with a deadly virus. In a less than creditable subplot, her husband Derek, a CIA operative who is the son of her previous husband, endangers Sam's ill father by bringing him to the ominous genetics research lab where her previous case was set. Landreth raises chilling elements of medical ethics here, but suspense and excitement don't go the distance as an unlikely tag team of townsfolk steps in to take care of the bad guys. (Nov.)Library Journal
Dr. Samantha Turner, coroner for Sheridan, Wyoming, stumbles upon a case of smallpox-supposedly eradicated-as she performs an autopsy on a local teenager. Before she can publicize her findings or hear from the Centers for Disease Control, she herself falls deathly ill with an improbable virus. Other worries include her CIA-agent husband (son of her first husband!); their premature baby; her father, who suffers from Alzheimer's; and conspiratorial doctors in the emergency room. The plot grows laboriously confused, with Turner suffering from selective amnesia and jumping to wild conclusions. Shaky, shrill, and rough-hewn.Book Details
Published
January 1, 1995
Publisher
Walker & Co
Pages
224
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780802731999