A Clinic for Murder (A Dr. Sam Turner Mystery) - Hardcover

Landreth, Marsha

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802732410 ISBN 13: 9780802732415

Publisher: Walker & Co, 1993

Synopsis

Attending a medical examiners' conference in San Diego, pregnant Samantha Turner finds that a bad case of morning sickness and the sudden death of a doctor could ruin her time there

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Minutes after Dr. Doyle Smith collapses at a San Diego medical examiners' conference, muttering, ``Murder...letter in safe...authorities...'' into Dr. Samantha Turner's ear, Sam's in his hotel room looking for that letter. There goes the convention--Sam spends the night in stir--and there goes Sam's honeymoon with her stepson Derek (who pursued her though The Holiday Murders, 1992)- -somebody bombs the flight they've booked back to Sheridan, Wyoming. The sequel, as Sam (whose pregnancy takes her off the plane at the last minute) alternately swaps light-comedy repartee with Derek (also surviving) and grimly tags the remains of the dead, shows Landreth's writing at her best and worst: despite an ingenious and gripping premise that ties the murder motive to some scary tissue-research at a St. Thomas clinic, she never finds a tone that would weave together all the threads of the story. A mix of homicide, midlife romance, coverups, and unassimilated forensic detail that reads like a bunch of outtakes from Sam's promising debut. But Landreth's talent ensures that she'll be back with a stronger vehicle. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

Readers who missed Dr. Sam Turner's debut in The Holiday Murders will have a hard time piecing together this sequel. Widowed for seven years, Samantha Turner is a Wyoming bison rancher and a medical examiner. Here she is also pregnant, unmarried and whiny. At a professional conference in San Diego, Dr. Doyle Smith collapses. Sam, rushing to his aid, hears him whisper "murder" and "letter in safe" before he dies. Checking out Smith's hotel room, Sam finds it has been ransacked. Soon she is arrested. Derek Turner, a CIA agent who is her late husband's son and also possibly the father of her child, turns up to spring her from jail and coax her into marriage. Sam continues her haphazard search into Smith's death, barely escaping a plane bombing on her return to Wyoming. A visit to Smith's widow in Denver is followed by a trip to a medical facility in the Caribbean which is linked to a bombed Los Angeles abortion clinic. The occasional inclusion of intriguing medical details fails to save this jumbled story, which relies way too heavily on circumstance.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Walker & Co
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0802732410
• ISBN 13: 9780802732415
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 212