Viets’s new series launch carries more heft than her earlier cozies. Her complicated heroine deserves a return outing.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Viets brings readers a treat with a new series featuring coroner’s investigator Angela Richman...[Viets] builds her unusual premise into a compelling thriller that moves quickly and builds suspense steadily.” —Booklist
“Devastating migraines send ‘death investigator’ Angela Richman, the heroine of this well-paced, darkly humorous series launch from Viets (The Art of Murder and fourteen other Dead-End Job mysteries), to the emergency room...[In Brain Storm,] Viets takes an entertaining detour from her usual cozy territory.” —Publishers Weekly
“Cozy veteran Viets (Dead-End mysteries), a stroke survivor, returns to her crime fiction roots with this intriguing tale that will attract forensic mystery buffs and fans of Max Allan Collins’s CSI tie-in series.” —Library Journal
“Brain Storm soars as Viets shows Angela's painful recovery, buoyed by her strong spirit and will to live.” —Sun-Sentinel
“[Brain Storm] is an affirmation of hope and recovery with bits of well-placed humor to enhance a murder mystery plot that also touches on insurance fraud and hospital politics. Fronted by a unique and winning protagonist, this new series promises to be as popular as Viets’s others.” —Oline Cogdill, Mystery Scene Magazine
“In her thrilling new series debut, Brain Storm, Elaine Viets calls upon her own challenging life experience in introducing Angela Richman, a death investigator working for upper-class Chouteau County in Missouri. Like Viets, Angela suffered a series of strokes and this death investigator is now struggling—in the midst of her recovery—to investigate a homicide that put her lifesaving neurosurgeon Dr. Jeb Travis Tritt in jail. Crisply written, with deft characterizations and action, Viets tells a tale that only she could have written.” —Brendan DuBois, author of Fatal Harbor, two-time Shamus Award winner, and three-time Edgar Award finalist
“A very powerful and unusual novel. I think you’ve got everything here that a reader loves—a hospital drama and thriller, a strong central character. Made much more interesting because the central character is a very unreliable narrator.” —Ann Cleeves, international bestselling author of the Vera Stanhope and Shetland series
“Elaine Viets has written the exciting first book in a multilayered crime novel series. Angela Richman is not only an investigator but a victim in this complex novel of crime, punishment, and medical malfeasance.” —Charlaine Harris, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“Elaine Viets’s newest is both a timely medical drama and a compelling mystery. Brain Storm gives us a detailed look at the shattered life of a determined death investigator. Readers will want more of Angela Richman’s adventures.” —Je Abbott, New York Times bestselling author of The First Order
“In Brain Storm, Elaine Viets takes a dangerous turn down a dark alley but manages it with panache and a touch of humor. Angela Marie Richman is a kick-ass protagonist who is victimized by the thing we all fear most—our own mortality. This is territory Viets knows well, and she does a nice job of showing the readers the terrain, all while entertaining them.” —Reed Farrel Coleman, New York Times bestselling author of Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins
“Trapped in a nightmarish world after suffering six strokes, death investigator Angela Richman finds she can’t trust anyone—including her own mind. A thrilling, suspenseful, twist-filled read that kept me up late into the night, Brain Storm marks a fascinating new direction for a wonderfully talented writer.” —Alison Gaylin, USA Today bestselling author of the Brenna Spector series
“Haunting and creepy, with a fast-paced, twisty plot, and a protagonist you will not soon forget—this is Elaine Viets at her most deliciously dark.” —David Ellis, Edgar Award winner and author of Breach of Trust and nine other novels
“I’ve been a fan of Elaine Viets’s books since she debuted her leather-clad heroine Francesca Vierling. And now I am delighted to see her give us another strong female character we can root for—death investigator Angela Richman. I’m also stoked to see Elaine venture into darker territory with Brain Storm, a multilayered mystery that is rich in its sense of place and character and propelled with medical intrigue. Brain Storm has everything I love in crime fiction—complexity, intelligence, pretzel-plotting, and a touch of dark humor.” —P.J. Parrish, New York Times bestselling author of Thomas & Mercer’s She’s Not There and the award-winning Louis Kincaid series
“With Brain Storm, Elaine Viets offers readers a rare gem, a mystery that not only engages the head but also compels the heart. Following a near-fatal stroke, death investigator Angela Richman must struggle to regain her physical and mental health, while at the same time trying to solve the murder of the inept doctor she blames for her predicament. Drawing on her own experience, Viets chronicles the harrowing journey back from the brink of death. And perhaps the most amazing aspect of the novel is that in the midst of such terrible darkness, Viets manages to deliver hilarious one-liners any comedian would envy.” —William Kent Krueger, Edgar Award–winning author of the New York Times bestseller Ordinary Grace
“A huge welcome to Angela Marie Richman, an edgy death investigator with a rapier wit and even sharper powers of observation, who makes her debut in Elaine Viets’s Brain Storm. I loved the deadpan humor from this character, a tough broad who’s survived with a vengeance and has scores to settle.” —Hallie Ephron, New York Times bestselling author of Night Night, Sleep Tight
2016-05-17
A death investigator battles to clear the neurosurgeon who saved her life.Dr. Jeb Travis Tritt is far from wealthy Chouteau Forest, Missouri's favorite son. A large man with a larger ego, he's tolerated only by virtue of his marriage to a local debutante. But numerous affairs with nurses at Sisters of Sorrow Hospital have pretty much trashed that union, and Tritt may be on his way out. Angela Marie Richman, on the other hand, is a child of the Forest in the truest sense: she grew up on the Du Pres estate, where her parents were caretakers. Now, as death investigator, she's been a pillar to the Forest elite in their darkest moments, like the night cousins Jordan Hobart and Jillian Du Pres crashed into Sandy Warburton's red Ferrari with deadly results. But in her moment of need—when she came to the SOS emergency room with obvious symptoms—popular neurologist Porter Gravois sent her home as "too young and fit to have a stroke." Only quick intervention by the arrogant Tritt saved her life. Now, as Angela starts her long recovery, she's tormented not only by the cosmic conundrum of how kindly Dr. Gravois almost killed her while obnoxious Dr. Tritt saved her, but by the real-world puzzle of how to get her life together. Left bald and bloated by her treatment, awash in impenetrable medical bills, and plagued by doubts about her ability to function in her job, she leans increasingly on her best friend, pathologist Katherine Kelly Stern. But when Dr. Tritt is accused of murder, Angela gathers her scattered wits to prove she can still investigate a death, even one that's personal.Viets' new series launch carries more heft than her earlier cozies (Catnapped!, 2014, etc.). Her complicated heroine deserves a return outing.
