Timmie Leary-Parker is a forensic nurse who has returned home to Puckett, Missouri, where her ailing father lives. The small town outside of St. Louis houses Memorial Hospital where Timmie works as an ER nurse with her colleagues, most of whom belong to the SSS - the Suckered Sister Sorority, a group of divorcees. Although Timmie gets along well with her fellow nurses, she soon makes enemies with the county coroner when she challenges his reasoning for not performing autopsies on a series of deaths that seem suspicious to her -- one of which is the ex-husband of Ellen, an ER nurse Timmie works with.

At a charity event that many hospital employees attend which benefits Restcrest, a nursing home specialising in Alzheimer's care that is associated with Memorial, Timmie demonstrates her ability to think and act quickly. When a man comes out of nowhere to threaten one of the Restcrest administrators with a gun, Timmie quickly quells the threat although the gunman gets away. While everyone seems fascinated with Timmie's courage, what fascinates Timmie more is that no one is interested in identifying the gunman or figuring out why he would target a nursing home administrator. This very subject also raises the interest of Daniel Murphy, a Pulitzer Prize- winning journalist who was also on the scene covering the event.

After another SSS member has an ex-husband die in the ER and the authorities prove reluctant to investigate, Timmie and Murphy decide to team up. They know something smells fishy, and they're determined to get to the bottom of it. But things become very personal when Timmie's ex-husband becomes the third SSS victim. Timmie and Murphy begin working together to solve this string of mysteries along with trying to figure out if these events are related to a string of suspicious deaths of Restcrest residents. Meanwhile, Timmie balances the repercussions of having a father falling further and further into the clutches of dementia.

BRAIN DEAD moved quickly and the mystery was compelling and intriguing. I usually read several books at a time, but I made an exception for this book, as I couldn't put it down and I carried it with me everywhere. The plot is written with just the right amount of tension - things are interesting, but never stretched beyond the bounds of belief. Eileen Dryer paints a vivid picture with her character profiles, and her own experience as a nurse makes for an authentic reading experience. The camaraderie that unit nurses experience shines through, as does the weariness and despair that family members go through when a loved one gets dementia. This book had it all - great characters, suspense, and a thrilling mystery; a reader can't ask for more!