Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner
![[5 stars]](../images/spots/1_splat_50.gif)
When Secrets Die
Amazon US TPB Amazon Canada TPB
Lynn S. Hightower
Class/Genre: Mystery Woman Main Character Medical Private Investigator
Series: Lena Padget
Pocket, Oct 2005, $14.00, 352 pp.
After caring for her son during a traumatic illness that eventually killed him, Emma Marsden is finally coming
to terms with her grief. Her world is shattered once again when a call from the Clay’s Mill children’s clinic
that was treating her son informed her that they had some of his organs that they kept for research purposes.
When she goes to collect them, the person who called her is under orders not to give them to her. She takes them
anyway.
Soon after that incident, Dr. Theodore Turnbridge, her son’s doctor, accuses Emma of poisoning her son because
she has Munchausen by Proxy. She is in danger of children’s protective services taking her fifteen year old
daughter away from her and there is the real possibility she might go to jail. She hires private detective Lena
Padgett to disprove the charges. Lena, who has an intense rapport with her client, takes the case but it isn’t
until Emma’s daughter is kidnapped that Lena, the police and the medical people have a clue who is behind Emma’s
legal troubles.
Lynn Hightower is one of the best thriller writers of the new millennium and will appeal to fans of Patricia
Cornwell and Nancy Taylor Rosenberg. Readers learn about the power of the medical profession and how in the
wrong hands it can ruin the lives of innocent people. Emma is a sympathetic character and readers will empathize
with all the problems she has to bear through no fault of her own. Lena plays more of a secondary role then in
previous novels in the series but the audience won’t feel cheated because she is still a key player in a tense
drama.
Harriet Klausner
Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner
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