BOOK BLURB: St. Louis Trauma nurse Casey McDonough thinks her life is interesting enough. Her best friend still drops acid, her ex-husband is a cross-dressing psychiatrist, and her mother has turned the third floor of the family home into the Chapel of Eternal Vigilance.
Then, things begin to really go wrong when OB/Gyn Dr. Dale Hunsacker arrives. Handsome, wealthy and charismatic, the good doctor is enchanting the patients of the St. Louis hospital. But, Cassy believes he is a serial killer. And the only person who takes her seriously, is Hunsacker himself.
Caught in a spiral of suspicion and intimidation, Casey approaches ex-Marine, ex-Jesuit homicide sergeant Jack Scanlan for help. All she has are hunches for proof, but she’ll do anything to stop the monster walking the halls of her hospital.
EXCERPT:
“Control your impulses, her mother had always said. Stifle your urges, the church agreed. She should have listened. The next time she had an urge like this one, she was going to lock herself in a closet until it went away.
“Honey, why are we here?”
“I have to make a stop before I take you home, Mom.”
A stop. She had to report a crime. Several crimes. That wasn’t exactly a run to the local Safeway for deodorant.
Gripping her purse in one hand and her mother in the other, Casey McDonough approached the St. Louis City Police Headquarters like a penitent approaching the gates of purgatory. It seemed amazing, really. Casey had been born no more than fifteen miles away, but she’d never visited this place before. She’d never even known precisely where it was.
A stark block of granite that took up the corner of Clark and Tucker, the headquarters did nothing to inspire comfort. Brass grillwork protected massive front doors and encased the traditional globe lamps that flanked it. Unmarked police cars and crime scene vans hugged the curb. Police in uniform or windbreakers and walkie-talkies hovered near the front door, chatting among themselves. Civilians edged by, sensing their own intrusion, much the way they would enter her hospital.
Casey didn’t want to be here. If she could have, she would have approached her friends on the county police force instead. She would have pulled one of them aside when they’d come into her emergency room and proposed her theory in a way that could be considered an inside joke instead of an accusation.
“Say, Bert, what would you think if I said there’s something just a little more sinister than fee-splitting going on around here? What if I told you that some of the bad luck around this place is actually connected? And not just because I know all the people involved, either.”
Bert would laugh and deflect her fears with common sense, and the issue would have gone no further.
Only none of the crimes Casey suspected had actually happened in the county. Bert wouldn’t know anything about them. He couldn’t do her any good. If she wanted any relief from the suspicions that had been building over the last few weeks like a bad case of indigestion, she was going to have to find it with the city cops. Cops she didn’t know. Cops who didn’t know her.
Casey pulled on the heavy glass-and-brass door and winced at its screech of protest. It sounded as if it resented her intrusion. The way everybody else ignored the noise, the door must have been objecting for years.
Inside, the foyer was a high square of marble, cool and hushed. Casey held the heavy door open for her mother to follow inside. Sketching a quick sign of the cross, the little woman instinctively reached for a holy water font.
“It’s not a church,” Casey reminded her.
It was hell.”
FEATURED AUTHOR: Eileen Dreyer
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Hi Eileen! Your book sounds wonderful!
This sounds like a “on the edge of my seat” kind of book! Can’t wait to read it. I think it will be a daytime book, though.
It would be nice if I left my name!
Linda DeCristofaro
I adored this book- I did read it back in 1991 and it left me salivating for more. Yes- I hunted out your books and waiting impatiently for each new title. Loved you under your other pen name. These books are part of my permanent collection and loaned out under the pain of death. Thank you Eileen for engaging reads that include a sustainable plot, characters that I can identify with, medicine (my first love) and the desire to keep on reading anything that you write.And NO SIMPERING VIRGINS as Barbara Cartland wore that one to death. (Well, maybe I won’t wax poetic on an occasional comment, but I am grateful to FB for making someone I admire tremendously accessible. I would love to meet you in person some day just to hear dry commentary. Thanks again- Laurie A number #1 fan!
It really sounds like a mixture of everything I love — especially the Marine. I can’t wait to get it.
Casey sounds to be a fun character. The blurb on her brought a smile to my face. After reading Laurie’s post above, I must read your work.
Thanks, everybody, especially Melanie for inviting me to play. I really hope you enjoy Amanda, as we fondly call the book. Let me know.