Fear of Dying

Magazine free lance writer Grace Beckmann accompanies her husband Albert, a doctor, who is flying his Piper to Alden to pick up his temporarily stranded Chief Resident Dr. Alexander Chang. At the small airport, a pregnant teen asks Grace to take her immediately out of the area, but before she asks her spouse, the girl vanishes. Not long afterward, Grace meets Paige, girlfriend to one of her twin sons. Paige asks Grace to find a missing friend. Grace asks her police pal Detective Morrisey to help her and he shows her a picture of a corpse that turns out to be the girl in Alden. Feeling guilty for failing the pregnant teen, Paige begins looking into missing young ladies and soon forms a pattern that if the abductors learn she has computed, they will kill her. FEAR OF DYING, sequel to the MURDER FLIES LEFT SEAT, is an engaging amateur sleuth medical thriller with some police procedural elements to enhance the plot. The story line moves slowly forward until Paige begins her inquiries and concludes that there is a pattern to the chaos of the kidnapped females. Though the villain seems too much of a stretch, fans of strong mysteries will relish Paige's courageous, but dangerous investigation. Harriet Klausner