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!
When trauma nurse Timmie Parker moves from California to her
old hometown in Missouri, it seems her hope for turning her
life around will finally be realized: She is miles away from
her bitter ex-husband, respected and admired by her new
coworkers and renewing her ties to her family. Then the
bodies begin to pile up. Elderly patients from Restcrest, a
highly regarded and innovative senior citizen care facility
attached to the hospital, keep dying in her ER, and Timmie
wants to know why. But when she tries to search for answers,
she gets caught in a tangled mystery that seems dangerously
linked to her new friends and to the welfare of her own
father. She finds an ally in Daniel Murphy, a Pulitzer
Prize-winning reporter who offers her much-needed support.
Together, they embark on an investigation that promises to
send Murphy soaring to the top of his profession, but which
also threatens to suck Timmie into a deadly conspiracy that
could cost her not only her job and peace of mind, but also
her life. Filled with the gripping emergency room details
that could only come from a true insider of the medical
profession, Brain Dead is a white-knuckle thriller
guaranteed to keep readers spellbound until the very last page.
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