Dead and Gone — Mary Kittredge

DEADLINES

When writer Charlotte Kent began researching her latest self-help book, Tricks for the Sick! at a renowned East Coast medical center, she hadn't planned a chapter on tips to avoid murder.

A slimy, unprincipled medical student is dead. His wife, a friend of Charlotte's, is the prime suspect. But Charlotte, with her stubborn yen for justice and an unerring nose for the messiest sort of problems, believes otherwise.

Problem one: the body has disappeared from the morgue. Problem two: it seems the victim had his unscrupulous fingers in some heavy-duty blackmail. Three: her chief suspect is the medical center's richest, most-respected doctor.

For this hustling, hump-it-to-the-deadline free-lance writer, the final chapter was going to be the killer.