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Who is killing off patients in Jacksonville, Florida, through assisted suicide? Perinne Anderson and her dog, Baby, are tasked with this investigation. She works undercover as a nurse detective for an insurance company that is being hit by these deaths. With a boat explosion, medical concerns, various foibles by the many players, Perinne’s relationship with a professor of medical ethics, and her own troubles involving a car chase and a nasty alligator, she wonders if someone has figured out her role. But as readers learn about four doctors who are employed at the Rathburn Clinic and Hospital, and who are all in financial binds, one has to wonder if one of them is the killer. And is it murder if people choose to die through assisted suicide? This is an underlying question in the author’s modern-day story of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the real-life Dr. Death from the 1980s and 1990s.
A light mystery, the novel keeps the reader’s attention through the twists and turns of life’s struggles and joys. Perinne is shown as a capable investigator, while the problems of each of the doctors are written with an insight into people’s personalities. The issues one has in life are shown with compassion. Likewise, utilizing the history of the area as well as knowledge gained by the author’s traveling and career as a nurse, including her understanding of ethical concerns, makes for helpful background information. However, the propensity to explain the meaning of some events and terms to the reader via the use of parentheses tends to take away from the flow of the storyline. Overall, though, the author has composed an interesting read, especially regarding the topic of assisted suicide and the value of pets.