FIRST DO NO HARM

A fatal overdose in a hospital’s unofficial nap room cries out for Smith and Chin Investigations.

Actually, it’s Lydia Chin’s brother Elliott, who runs the ER at River Valley Downstate Medical Center, who begs her to come to the aid of his friend Jordy Kazarian, a morgue assistant who woke up from his own 40 winks to find nurse Sophia Scott sleeping the big sleep. Since Jordy checked to make sure Sophia was dead and then waited for the authorities to show up, he’s naturally the person NYPD Det. Helena Church is convinced shot her up with drugs she never would’ve taken on her own. When Lydia finds out that Juanita Cohen, Jordy’s attorney, has already reached out to Bill Smith, Lydia’s partner, she’s in it for good. Or for evil, as the pair’s probe of the hospital quickly reveals. There’s the fact that security chief James McGraw denies any knowledge of the basement nap room or the neighboring hookup room, which was so popular that staffers had to sign up for reservations. There’s the consequent lack of in-house oversight of the murder scene. And there’s the strike River Valley’s nurses are threatening, which the hospital hopes to prevent by negotiating with a team that unaccountably included Sophia Scott, a by-the-numbers caregiver who’s never volunteered for double shifts and has always taken management’s side in earlier disputes. Rozan keeps everything moving along with a lot more efficiency and sympathy than either the NYPD or the hospital staff, and although the big reveal is a big letdown, the final scene that follows makes the whole trip worthwhile.

Warning: not the best gift for a hospital-bound friend, or a read likely to speed your own recovery.