Diana O’Hehir Murder Never Forgets

Murder Never Forgets

Diana O'Hehir

Berkley, Sep 2005, $23.95, 304 pp.

ISBN: 0425205851

Carla was working at Susie's health Food Store in Santa Cruz when the Green Brach Manor Nursing Home calls to inform her that her father, a victim of Alzheimer's, had deteriorated and will have to be moved to the "no hope house" for closer managed care. Carla believes her beloved dad, once a renowned Egyptologist, would die in the stifling prison like edifice. She journeys to Berkley to be with him and while there asks for a job as an aide assisting patients with their medicine, etc if her dad can stay in the more independent facility. Administrator Mrs. Sisal hires her.

However, odd occurrences begin to happen at the Green Branch starting with a fire, meds missing, the death of an employee, tampered food, and her father blaming everything on a dead woman at the beach that is either near the home or the Pyramids. Mrs. Sisal demands that Carla, who is very popular amongst the patients, spy on them and the staff to learn who is causing the troubles if she and her father are to stay at Green Branch. Reluctantly she begins spying not realizing the danger she places herself in by doing so.

MURDER NEVER FORGETS combines an intriguing amateur sleuth tale with some Egyptologist elements inside a deep family drama. Readers get a taste of what happens at a nursing home which operates more like a hospital prison than a nurturing of our seniors facility. Thus the storyline grips readers on two levels: that of the mystery and that of senior citizen health care; together they blend into a fine contemporary thriller.

Harriet Klausner