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Veteran nurse Lexi Burns is content with her life in the small town of Atherton, Missouri. She has a rewarding career, great co-workers, and a comfortable relationship with her long-term boyfriend, Scott. She also has Zelda Allen, the most amazing lifelong best friend anyone could ever hope for. Lexi’s tastes are simple—a good book, great food, a cold beer, and the occasional girls’ night out. But when she works a Code Blue on a teenage girl named Buffy Stephens, who dies of gruesome injuries following a vicious attack, Lexi is compelled to uncover the truth. When local authorities prove incompetent and cave under political pressure, Lexi and Zelda launch their own investigation into Buffy’s death. Soon the aspiring sleuths find themselves risking their careers as they come under fire from the police. While they uncover more and more clues, they are drawn deeper and deeper into a spiraling vortex of danger where the truth may cost them everything—including their lives.
Gripping scenes, multiple suspicious characters, and strange eyewitness accounts make for a delightful mystery that will keep readers guessing until the very end. The book calls attention to the disparities in the legal system in cases involving female victims and to the prioritization of politics over justice. The author also paints a thorough picture of the demanding, often thankless nature of the nursing profession. Female empowerment and friendship are powerful recurring themes as the main characters stumble through an amateurish investigation. Told from the perspective of a middle-aged woman, this novel gives a lighthearted depiction of life for a single woman in her forties—decreased alcohol tolerance, increased indigestion, aching joints, perimenopause, and questionable romantic relationships. Despite some proofreading errors in the text, Karmazin successfully delivers a highly entertaining tale of compelling suspense with enjoyable characters and humorous undertones.