DOCTORED EVIDENCE

Suspicions swirl around the operating-room death of Larry Conkel, in Shoreview Memorial, the same place he crunched numbers. Before his routine biopsy becomes a fatal emergency when a catheter explodes in his chest, however, the dying Conkel delivers a cryptic message to a nurse, who dutifully passes it along to Karen Hayes, Shoreview’s legal counsel and Conkel’s best friend there. Torn between doing right by her friend and protecting the hospital, Karen feels guilty because she advised Conkel to have his surgery at Shoreview instead of the other institution he was considering. With the help of Conkel’s message, Karen finds secret files that point to the hospital fraud he was preparing to expose. When records indicate that the catheter was probably tampered with, everyone around Karen suddenly looks guilty: imperious surgeon Dr. Edward Bernard; unctuous Joe Grimes, who runs the hospital with a ruthless eye on the dollar; Conkel’s widow Paula, who’s carrying on an affair with a member of the hospital staff; nervous secretary Margaret, who regularly eavesdrops on Karen; smug Dr. Carson Weber, who’s been accused of sexually assaulting patients too drugged to resist. Confronted with this crew, Karen spends less time questioning and deducing than skulking and chasing. At one point, she’s forced to hide in a giant Moroccan urn to avoid discovery. Her free-spirited husband Jake, a professional musician, leavens her mood and assists her in her Nancy Drew–like sleuthing.

Awkward prose and plotting are counterbalanced by enough pace and energy to make this debut inoffensive—but not enough to make it memorable.