The Scalpel's Edge (A Mystery)

Dr. Lydia Weston undertakes to clear the name of a woman surgeon embroiled in an ever-deepening medical scandal, set against the backdrop of the 1876 World’s Fair, in the riveting next book from the author of Murder by Degrees.

The year is 1876 and the World’s Fair has come to Philadelphia.

Dr. Lydia Weston, graduate of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania and one of the first female doctors in the country, is ready to introduce the world to the medical talents of her female peers and students. With a public showcase of a relatively new technology called anesthesia, led by Lydia’s colleague, the groundbreaking woman surgeon Dr. Clara Hall, she intends to do just that.

But the exhibited operation goes mysteriously, horribly wrong, and Dr. Lydia Weston finds herself at the center of a controversy surrounding the death of a patient—none other than Arthur Carlson, a prominent businessman whose ruthless dealings have made him a few enemies.

In the operating theater filled with men who already doubt whether any woman could perform such a complex procedure, all eyes turn to Clara Hall and her scalpel. What should have been a victory for the Woman’s Medical College becomes a public tragedy. Clara is taken into custody for negligence and murder, but when Lydia performs the autopsy, something far more sinister makes itself apparent.

With the help of Inspector Thomas Volcker and Sergeant Charles Davies, Dr. Weston begins an investigation of her own to clear her friend’s name, stopping at nothing to reveal the dark and powerful forces that she’s convinced are responsible for Carlson’s murder.

Culminating in a thrilling chase through the World’s Fair grounds at night, The Scalpel’s Edge is historical mystery at its finest.