The focus of my blog is to review book series and not individual novels. But writers are going to continue writing novels within a series even after I have done my review, so I plan on reviewing the individual novels as they come into circulation.  Danielle Girard has recently added book #2, Excise to the Dr. Schwartzman series.

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I have been under the weather lately and I’ve been bemoaning about getting out of bed and dragging my sorry butt to work. After thinking about Danielle Girard’s leading character, medical examiner Dr. Annabelle Schwartzman, from the latest novel in the series, Excise, I feel I have no excuse to complain. Schwarzman starts off Excise recovering from a double mastectomy and enduring the after-effects from her third dose of chemotherapy. On top of that she is constantly looking over her shoulder for anything that might come her way in relation to her psychopathic husband who is now sitting in a South Carolina jail awaiting trial on kidnapping and murder. Between bouts of hurling abdominal contents, she is working on a puzzling murder of a victim that happens to be her surgical oncologist. The paranoid individual that she has become immediately concerns herself on whether this is the work of the abomination known as her husband. Fortunately for Schwartzman it quickly becomes clear that this is the work of a serial killer.

For the more geeky fans of CSI related novels, Girard has introduced an interesting murder weapon to the scene of the crime; Adriamycin, a chemotherapy drug. Adriamycin has the nickname ‘Red Death’ namely because of its color and also because of its numerous serious side effects which includes corrosive properties and its effect on the skin. As you could guess, the scene of the crime is rather gruesome.

I found Excise to be a fun as well as an educational read and highly recommend it to the crime thriller aficionado. This is the second book in the series and even though it could be read without reading the first in the series, Exhume, it would be beneficial to read Exhume before reading Excise to get an understanding of why Schwartzman is paranoid about her husband Spencer.

The next book in the series is Expose with a tentative release date of July 2018.

I would like to thank NetGalley for my Advance Reader Copy of Excise.

To learn more about the series check out the Dr. Schwartzman series.