October 30, 1995
Thea Kozak, an educational consultant in Massachusetts, was driven to find her sister's murderer in Chosen for Death. This time she's dragged in to murder by her friend Eve Paris, whose mother, psychologist Helene Streeter, was stabbed near her home. Eve claims that her father, psychiatrist Clifford Paris, killed his wife to be with his gay lover, and that Thea-unlike the police-would agree if she investigated. These charges raise considerable conflict in Thea's work-intensive life: she is negotiating with Eve's father about his hiring her firm to help his psychiatric clinic attract more patients; her partner is absorbed by her upcoming wedding, leaving Thea to get rid of an unscrupulous, incompetent Employee from Hell; and she is trying to preserve her rocky romance with Maine homicide detective Andre Lemieux. Then she is threatened by an intruder with a knife and her house is set on fire. With Thea's personal life so full, the murder seems peripheral, yet Flora wraps things up satisfactorily in a story that is successfully carried forward by the strength of its characters.