Book Review: With a Vengeance

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

With a Vengeance     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
Eileen Dreyer
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Medical   Woman Main Character   Thriller
St. Martin’s, March 2003, $24.95, 384 pp.

The city of St. Louis and its County join forces to form a first rate SWAT Team that services the region. The only person on the group who doesn’t carry a gun is the medic Maggie O’ Brien. Maggie and her team are called in to break up a hostage situation with the victim being Maggie’s boyfriend Sean Delaney and the perpetrator is a paranoid schizophrenic Montana Bob, a former FBI agent.

She talks Montana Bob down but he suddenly dies in the hospital. Maggie wonders if somebody killed him after he told her the names of three other people. When she seeks the trio, she learns that the two gangbangers and the pediophile also died in her hospital where she works as a trauma nurse. Maggie starts collecting evidence involving a silent conspiracy between people she knows in the hospital and the police department. She just has to figure out where to deliver her information to before she is killed or framed for murder.

It has been too many years since a crime thriller from Eileen Dreyer was released, but WITH A VENGEANCE is well worth the wait. The heroine is an admirable person with a subtle sense of humor who lives in perpetual crisis mode that would break many people, but she thrives on it. Her decision to root out the perpetrators knowing she will be shunned by her peers or killed is courageous but she still willingly pays the price. This is a first rate action packed medical thriller on a par with Robin Cook.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner