A Taxing Death

Around noon on an average summer day in Sacramento, an ambulance rolls up to the State Capitol, intent on responding to an emergency call from inside the building. Rushing in, they arrive at the Department of Revenue Supervisor's Office to find the man denying the need for emergency care. Paramedics convince him to allow them to check out his pacemaker. They are soon reading his tracing and declare that they need to convert his heart to a normal rhythm. They pull out the defibrillator paddles to try and aid his heart with a single jolt of electric current, but it doesn't work and minutes later he lies dead in his office. Just another heart attack on the job .... or is it? Book 5 in the Jill Quint, MD, Forensic Pathologist series, finds Dr. Quint called in by the family to perform an autopsy on Manuel Valencia, the recently dead man. He was loved by his large extended family, admired by co-workers, and he had just purchased new hiking boots for an upcoming vigorous hike in Yosemite. Both the local coroner and Jill agree, it's a homicide and they begin to look at the large list of people who hate to pay taxes. They have the fake paramedics on camera, how hard could it be to find the killers?


Genre: Mystery