It’s snowy December in New York and closing in on Christmas.
Teresa is a seventeen year old girl in Quogue, Long Island, who was just in a car accident, now in a coma. Some time has already slipped by and there’s a girl in the city who needs a heart, but Teresa’s guardian, her grandmother Eileen, isn’t letting her go, and has the means to keep her on support for as long as she wants.
While Eileen is away for the weekend, Teresa passes away, and the doctor administering to her, authorizes the harvesting of her organs, her heart specifically, to give to the girl in the city. Upon returning, Eileen is irate! She thinks it’s a conspiracy, especially since the doctor works at the same hospital in New York City as the girl who needed the transplant.
She hires William Parkland and Catherine Huntington, the attorneys from The Montauk Murder Mystery and The Manhattan Murder Mystery.
Five people had access to Eileen’s mansion. A soft-spoken Indian doctor who knows how scarce and valuable organs are, and who gives William and Catherine their first lead in the case. A Jamaican nurse who believes in reincarnation and who has a wish to come back as something out of the ordinary, and who Eileen was on the verge of firing. Teresa’s best friend Claire who has a secret about her and Teresa, and insight into Teresa’s thought process. One of Eileen’s spiteful friends who believes in the Almighty dollar, and who had a falling out with her over a business deal. And an old theologian who has read and reread Plato and shares insight into some of the most widely talked about issues concerning religion, and who’s at odds with Eileen over a subjective matter.
William and Catherine have to go speak to all five them, hearing their views on life and dying, and if they had any insight into Teresa’s wishes, and would they’ve crossed that line?, knowing the consequences, from the standpoints of going to prison, losing their job, losing their family possibly, not honoring their friend’s wishes, and for those with a religious backbone, maybe damnation, or sacrifice—being tested—like Abraham, and would they have the reasoning to persuade William and Catherine to see it their way.
On the onset, William and Catherine are at odds; William believes that even if they find out who did it, if somebody did do it, to’ve just kept the girl on support, whether they knew her wishes or not, while this other girl needed the heart, wasn’t the way to go. But Catherine believes nobody had that right to make that decision, except Eileen. But being two open-minded people, they know things can change during the course of events as new information surfaces. Which does! Startling information!—as to why Eileen might’ve kept Teresa on life-support to begin with! And it had nothing to do with hoping a miracle was going to take place and she’d come to!
William and Catherine weave through the reasoning and the beliefs and the motives of the suspects, and weigh all the evidence, and have a better understanding of how the minds of the one percent and their family and friends work. However, there’s only one hard clue that points in the right direction, and both of the high-priced Manhattan attorneys overlooked it! Only an individual with exceptional awareness and who had a bent for solving complex problems would’ve recognized it and made something of it, though.
Mainstream mystery with religious, psychological, social and philosophical overtones, relating to abortion, the death penalty, euthanasia, criminal justice, indestructibility, and the death tax, among others.
Free 3/17
http://www.amazon.com/Death-Murder-M...dp/B00AECJM9O/