Dr. Jessica Teska needed a start over in her life, including not seeing her old boyfriend Barry. Jessica packs up her belongings and moves to San Francisco as the next medical examiner. As she starts her new job, one of the first cases she takes is to do an autopsy on a young woman. In the autopsy, she sees that the woman was pregnant. This brings back a flashback from her former job.

As Jessica is continuing this autopsy, some things are not matching up. At first it looks like the young woman, Rebecca, died from a drug overdose. But after speaking with several people, including her boss Mike Stone, they all say she would never use drugs. Things really heat up when Jessica finds that another body has washed up on shore and has identical marks just like Rebecca. How can these new cases have the same markings? How does Mike fit into this? Also, Jessica finds out that Rebecca was fired from her job, and no one wants the reason why to come out.

Jessica’s hands get tied when the big boss informs her that he has closed the case on this and he has noted cause of death as an overdose. Jessica tries everything she can to convince her boss that this is not the case, but no one will listen to anything she has to say. Jessica is trying hard to figure out why these two cases are connected and why everyone is stopping her from fully finding out the truth.

Judy Melinke and T.J. Mitchell write a great book of mystery. FIRST CUT had a lot of hidden stories that somehow in the end all come together. This book had me guessing till the very end, and even then I was shocked.

Melinke and Mitchell really tell a great mystery. I would love to see another book with these same characters. Maybe there will be a sequel--I sure hope so.