Join the camaraderie of the SSS (Suckered Sister Sorority) in the Emergency Room of the Memorial Medical Center in Puckett, Missouri. Newly admitted member Timmie Leary-Parker brings her skills as a trauma forensic nurse from the battlegrounds of Los Angeles.

The members of the SSS (all divorcees) are crafted with humor and obvious affection. They become people you care about as they work together in crisis situations. Dr. Ellen Mayfield's ex-husband is admitted to the ER with flu symptoms and dies. The coroner refuses to order an autopsy, as well as ignoring Timmie's identical request for an elderly patient who had died during the night. Timmie attributes his reluctance to incompetence.

The SSS makes a compulsory appearance at a fund raising horse show. The recipient of the charity is Restcrest, an avant-garde senior care and research facility associated with Memorial Hospital. Here we meet most of the rest of the principal characters. Dan Murphy is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner suffering from burnout and merely maintaining as a non-drinking alcoholic. He has downsized his ambition to fit the needs of a very small town paper. Murphy attends the event to interview the head of the facility and the administrator and co-founder of the research facility. While talking to them, someone tries to take a shot at them. Timmie wrestles the gun from the man, and the shooter disappears. What is strange to Timmie and Dan is that no one seems interested in trying to identify the perpetrator.

Subsequently Dr. Barb Adkin's ex-husband dies in a fire. The police are reluctant to investigate the event as arson, and Dan and Timmie team up to solve this mystery. While attempting to do so, they become ensnared in a larger and more sinister swirl of seemingly unrelated events.

Meanwhile, Timmie is stretched emotionally by being a single parent with the sole responsibility for the care of Joe Leary, her venerated father. The town remembers a scholar, a musician and a caring Irishman. Reality was and has become something very different.

Brain Dead showcases an author who pays attention to the craft of writing. Her plot is kept flowing by well balanced characters who show us, rather than tell us what is going on. The dialogue is snappy, often infused with gentle humor, and the novel moves at a pace that is varied sufficiently to hold one's interest.

Dreyer/Korbel has written several books that address critical medical issues. Few books have affected me as much as A Rose for Maggie and A Soldiers Heart. Were I reviewing these poignant books today, I would give each a five heart rating. Brain Dead is as technically brilliant, but because in comparison it didn't move me in quite the same way, I gave it four hearts.

--Thea Davis