Kill or Cure: An Edwina Crusoe Mystery

Former nurse and amateur sleuth Edwina Crusoe returns to New Haven, Conn.'s Chelsea Memorial Hospital, where a doctor has apparently gone berserk and shot his wife, a security guard and a teenager in the emergency room. A lawyer friend asks Edwina to take a look at the situation, since she knows the hospital and the doctor's wealthy in-laws, who are, oddly, paying for his defense. Edwina locates the teenager, the only survivor of the crime, to whom the doctor spoke before the shooting, but the boy refuses to answer questions. As she tracks down other promising leads, Edwina gathers conflicting reports about the doctor's personality from his former roommate and his current psychiatrist. Meanwhile, Edwina's home life is in a shambles because her mother dislikes her twin sons' nanny. Mothers and their children weave through this lively plot as Kittredge (Desperate Remedy) comments acutely on family life, motherhood and victims' rights and neatly ties up the threads of a messy crime. (May)