Death by Dose

by Lynn Ronsen RN

Formats

Softcover

$19.99

Hardcover

$29.99

E-Book

$3.99

Softcover

$19.99

Book Details

Language : English

Publication Date : 9/11/2019

Format : Softcover

Dimensions : 6x9

Page Count : 342

ISBN : 9781796058321

Format : Hardcover

Dimensions : 6x9

Page Count : 342

ISBN : 9781796058338

Format : E-Book

Dimensions : N/A

Page Count : 342

ISBN : 9781796058314

About the Book

The book is about a nurse detective who works for an insurance company, Safe Trust. Her job is to work undercover to investigate events, such as wrongful deaths, malpractice, neglect, etc., which are costing the insurance company much more money than normal. Perinne Anderson, the main character, lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She’s hired by Safe Trust to investigate deaths that are occurring in Jacksonville, Florida. One of a group of four physicians who work at the Rathburn Clinic and Hospital is euthanizing patients for insurance money. Perinne is hired to figure out which one of the physicians is guilty. Perinne is aided in her investigations by her little dog, Baby, who does play a big part in the book. Perinne’s also aided by her friend, Dr. Alvin Navarre, who is a professor of ethics at the University of Minnesota. During the course of the investigation, Perinne is run off the road by the perpetrator, gets locked out on a balcony at the clinic and is forced to repel down the outside of the building landing in a lake inhabited by an alligator, and in the end, has a stand off with the perpetrator who is holding a gun on her.

About the Author

Lynn Ronsen is a retired Registered Nurse, a graduate of Pace University in New York with a degree in Nursing. She has travelled around the world in retirement, with Kenya, Africa being her last trip. She likes crocheting and reading. Lynn is now living in Jacksonville, Florida with her husband, Grady, and their Yorshire Terrier, Winston.

Editorial Reviews

Lynn Ronsen’s Death by Dose is more than just another murder mystery. It explores ethical and moral issues simultaneously as it weaves an involving who-dun-it plot. Readers are asked not only to figure out who the dealer in death is, but also to consider whether what’s going on is really murder or mercy.

An insurance company notices an anomaly. There seems to be an inordinate number of deaths associated with patients in a particular hospital in Jacksonville, Florida. The company determines that the best way to look into it is clandestinely. They tap one of their top investigators, a young woman named Perinne who is both a trained nurse and a former detective. She joins the hospital’s unit that is responsible for critically ill patients that are nearing end of life situations. The unit assumes she’s there to help improve their business. She’s actually there to find out if someone is dispensing death and why.

Initially, four main suspects emerge—all with potential motives, which appear to be money. There’s the head of the unit, a Jewish doctor originally from New York. He’s an older man with a wife who apparently spends money as fast as he can make it. There’s a doctor from Colorado who spends as much time womanizing, and gambling, and losing, as he does caring for patients. There’s a beautiful and brilliant female doctor whose twin sister is locked away in a mental facility whose prices are rising. And there’s an ostensibly upright African American doctor who is facing a financially devastating lawsuit. All have a need to supplement their income, but which may be willing to break the law to do so?

Author Ronsen tells her tale by shifting back and fourth between the investigation itself and the actual instances of assisted suicide that the unknown doctor is involved in. By detailing why different individuals have made the decision to end their life early, (and pay off a doctor to help them with proceeds from their insurance settlements), she explores difficult moral and ethical questions about the right to die with dignity.

While the overall subject matter in her novel is pretty heavy, Ronsen keeps the tone of her yarn relatively light. She gives protagonist Perinne a charming Lhasa Apso dog that seems to always pop up in the middle of things. She provides a smart and hunky Native American love interest for the intrepid investigator. And in the best tradition of mysteries, she saves a surprise or two for the end. If you’re dying to dig into an interesting mystery, Death by Dose may be just what the doctor ordered.

- Reviewed by Jake Bishop for Pacific Book Review
"Although modern medicine cannot legally and actively expedite death by a lethal dose, which is considered murder, it is legal, ethical and recognized, and acceptable practice to allow a series of natural events to take place that will result in death."

Who is killing off patients in Jacksonville, Florida, through assisted suicide? Perinne Anderson and her dog, Baby, are tasked with this investigation. She works undercover as a nurse detective for an insurance company that is being hit by these deaths. With a boat explosion, medical concerns, various foibles by the many players, Perinne’s relationship with a professor of medical ethics, and her own troubles involving a car chase and a nasty alligator, she wonders if someone has figured out her role. But as readers learn about four doctors who are employed at the Rathburn Clinic and Hospital, and who are all in financial binds, one has to wonder if one of them is the killer. And is it murder if people choose to die through assisted suicide? This is an underlying question in the author’s modern-day story of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the real-life Dr. Death from the 1980s and 1990s.

A light mystery, the novel keeps the reader’s attention through the twists and turns of life’s struggles and joys. Perinne is shown as a capable investigator, while the problems of each of the doctors are written with an insight into people’s personalities. The issues one has in life are shown with compassion. Likewise, utilizing the history of the area as well as knowledge gained by the author’s traveling and career as a nurse, including her understanding of ethical concerns, makes for helpful background information. However, the propensity to explain the meaning of some events and terms to the reader via the use of parentheses tends to take away from the flow of the storyline. Overall, though, the author has composed an interesting read, especially regarding the topic of assisted suicide and the value of pets.

- Reviewed by Carol Anderson for The US Review of Books

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