Vicki Stiefel The Grief Shop

The Grief Shop

Vicki Stiefel

Leisure, Sept 2006, $6.99, 353 pp.

ISBN 0843957433

Tally Whyte runs the Massachusetts Grief Assistance Organization (MGAP) and although it is in the building that houses the medical examiners office it is a separate entity. The Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Veda Barrow is Tally's foster mother who she loves dearly. She is also in love with Sheriff Hank Cunning who lives in Maine and wants her to take a job up there as chief medical examiner.

Tally's life begins to radically change when she finds a lump on her three-legged dog and takes her to the vet who wants to do a biopsy. Then she is called to the medical examiner's office because the body of a child was in there with the phrase "sins of the father" on her hand. When they track down the victim's parents, they discover that a second child that was staying with them was also kidnapped. She is returned to her parents but a third child is found dead with the same words written on her hand that were inscribed on Rose's. Veda is hospitalized with an infection and then someone injected her with medicines that destroyed her brain. To make matters worse, the expected new chief medical examiner wants MGAP out of the building. Tally tries to carry on and identify the killer while finding she has feelings for another man. When Veda is kidnapped, Tally goes on point to find the killer before he strikes again.

There is so much action in THE GRIEF SHOP that readers will want to finish it in one sitting to find out what happens and how the various sub-plots are linked together. Most people would break under the strain Tally is under but the protagonist seems to gather strength out of adversity. Vicki Stiefel is a talented storyteller who writes enjoyable consuming psychological thrillers.

Harriet Klausner