With A Vengeance

Eileen Dreyer worked as a trauma nurse for many years, so her stories are authentic as can be, although you may wonder at some of the situations her characters get into.  With a Vengeance is the story of Maggie O'Brien, an emergency room nurse with extra training to be the nurse accompanying the SWAT team.  They call her SwatBabe. Maggie has an affinity working with the delusional and schizophrenic; she listens to them and offers comfort.  But when Montana Bob dies because of the CIA and aliens monitoring his brain (his tin foil hat quit working) she wonders why he said that "they" killed Urban, Dog, Sancho, and Snake. She discovers that the four were the worst kind of criminals, pedophile, gangbanger and murderers, whom many believed that they deserved to die.  But it looks like they may have been helped. One more criminal may have died because she was overheard to angrily say "let's kill him", as she held his little boy after he tried to set him on fire.  Maggie knows that by doing her own investigation into the evil mens' deaths, she will turn everyone at the hospital (where the victims were cared for) and the police (who had to haul the criminals in repeatedly) against her. Still she can't condone the murder of criminals; for one thing it would make her just like her father, Tommy, who believed in his own justice at just about any price. 

She knew that one of her friends or partners had succumbed to "fixing" the bad guys by killing them . By exposing the murderer she would be exposing all of them to the scrutiny of an accusing press, internal police investigations and hospital boards. She would also destroy the camaraderie developed by working with life and death issues every day.  Maggie has to make some very difficult choices.
 
With a Vengeance is dark and funny, full of gallows humor, much of it politically incorrect; just like the way good friends and lovers can talk to each other. Eileen Dreyer accurately depicts the boredom, fear, and the adrenaline rush in the life-threatening situations found in emergency rooms and at police stake-outs. At least I believed that it was accurate. Read  With a Vengeance for yourself and let me know.