Bøker av Meg Gardiner

When you have to take on the White House there's only one woman to call - Jo Beckett.When a rock singer is killed onstage during a concert, Jo Beckett is called in to perform a psychological autopsy. But Tasia McFarland's death causes Jo all kinds of problems, because Tasia is the ex-wife of the President of the United States.The White House pressures Jo to declare Tasia's death an accident rather than a homicide. The media and conspiracy nuts rant that Tasia was knocked off to silence her, for unknown reasons. Fringe extremists seethe about taking direct action to "e;save America"e; from the president and his administration.Jo learns that an obsessed fan was apparently stalking Tasia. The stalker may have killed her and escaped in the panic at the concert.As the media and conspiracy frenzy grows, the White House leans harder on Jo to close the case. When she won't, Gabe Quintana finds his military orders suddenly changed, and he's called up to active duty in Afghanistan... in 72 hours.Jo discovers the identity of the stalker. It's someone who's obsessed with Tasia's new boyfriend, a famous country singer. Jo calls the police but she's too late. The stalker stabs the singer to death.The police kill the stalker. The case seems to have come to a spectacular conclusion. But Jo doesn't think the stalker in fact murdered Tasia; the facts don't add up. She fears that Tasia was killed for other reasons. And she's nervous, because the President is coming to San Francisco to attend Tasia's memorial service...

A pulse-pounding, race-against-time thriller featuring forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett.Forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett's speciality is the psychological autopsy - an investigation into a person's life to determine whether a death was natural, accidental, suicide, or homicide. When Jo is asked to do a psychological autopsy on a living person - one with a suspect memory who can't be trusted to participate in his own medical care - she knows all her skills will be put to the test. Jo is called to the scene of an aircraft inbound from London to help deal with a passenger who is behaving erratically. She figures out that Ian Kanan has got anterograde amnesia, and can't form new memories. Jo finds herself racing to save a patient who can walk and talk and yet can't help Jo figure out just what happened to him. Suddenly a string of clues arises, something to do with a super deadly biological agent code-named "e;Slick"e;, a kidnapping, and a secret partnership gone horribly wrong. Jo realises Kanan's addled mind may hold the key to preventing something terrible from happening in her beloved San Francisco. With time running out, she will have to get deeper into the life of a patient than she ever has before, hoping the truth emerges from the fog of his mind in time to save her city - and herself.

Evan Delaney, novelist and legal go-fer, is dressed as Diana Ross in order to crash a fancy-dress party and serve a summons, when she hears that Franklin Brand is back in town. Brand is the hit-and-run driver who sentenced Evan's lover Jesse to life in a wheelchair, and killed his best friend.Since the accident, Brand has been avoiding justice overseas; but if he's back Evan and Jesse are determined to get him, helped by the dead boy's brother, Adam. Brand has been a high-flyer in Mako Technologies, a cyber-security firm, and this is where Evan starts looking.She quickly uncovers evidence that Brand was embezzling funds, and that Adam's brother knew all about it. So maybe the hit-and-run wasn't an accident at all? The policeman investigating is killed, and Adam and Jesse both come under suspicion.Matters are further complicated by the confused emotions of Jesse who feels a survivor's guilt, and Adam who resents the fact that Jesse is alive while his brother died.But there are more corpses to come - including a near miss for Evan herself - before the bad guys are finally brought to book.