Do No Harm

October 22, 2018
In Eastman’s uninspired, occasionally cloying sequel to 2017’s Unnatural Causes, Katie LeClair, who works in a family medical clinic in Baxter, Mich., is upset to learn that Taylor Knox, a premed college student she once mentored, has vanished. For a sociology research project into an “old criminal case that got a lot of media attention,” Knox chose to study the decade-plus-old murder of Heather Stone, a University of Michigan undergrad who died after being pushed into a pile of building materials. The man who was found standing over Stone’s corpse and later convicted for the killing, Eugene Lowe, was recently released from prison and was later treated by LeClair twice for injuries he claimed were accidental. Coincidentally, the professor who gave Knox the research assignment is dating LeClair’s best friend, and her own significant other, hunky colleague Matt Gregor, was involved with Stone at the time of the young woman’s death. Underdeveloped characters and predictable plot developments make for a routine mystery. Agent: Sharon Bowers, Miller Bowers Griffin Literary Management.

October 1, 2018
A busy doctor's new patient has more than just medical problems.Dr. Katie LeClair, who works at the Baxter Family Medicine practice in a small Michigan town not far from Ann Arbor, doesn't quite know what to make of Eugene Lowe, who's recently been released from prison after serving time for killing a college student at the University of Michigan. Lowe claims to be innocent and to have run into a door, but it's obvious that he's been in a fight. Dr. Matt Gregor, who's drawn close to Katie since they met while caught up in a murder investigation (Unnatural Causes, 2017), saw Lowe in the emergency room, where he claimed to have fallen. Many in town think Lowe was innocent of the murder for which he was convicted, but others don't want him around. That goes double for the husband of his high school best friend, Alicia, whose father did everything he could do keep Lowe away from his daughter. Oddly, Taylor Knox, a pre-med student Katie's befriended, has suddenly gone missing in the middle of her quest to prove Lowe's innocence as her project for a sociology course. With the help of Matt and her brother, Caleb, a computer expert, Katie's drawn into the search for Taylor even as she reviews the evidence that made Taylor think Lowe was innocent. Once she looks over old news stories and asks questions of people who were there the night the college student died, Katie realizes that the case against Lowe was really quite weak, depending on witnesses who were either too drunk to remember or lying about the timeline. Despite several threats, she refuses to let Lowe down or give up on the search for Taylor.A strong protagonist with awesome research skills works her way through the possibilities and finds the answer in a surprising killer.

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