Margaret Truman’s Deadly Medicine: A Capital Crimes Novel

In Bain’s by-the-numbers fourth Capital Crimes novel (after 2015’s Margaret Truman’s Internship in Murder), Jayla King receives news of her father’s murder in Papua New Guinea while trying on a dress in series regular Flo Clombe’s D.C. clothing boutique. Flo befriends Jayla and discovers that her father, Dr. Preston King, was developing a natural and nonaddictive pain killer in the remote Sepik River region of the island. King’s four acres of crops were destroyed and his research records stolen. Meanwhile, PI Robert Brixton, working on a case that involves a scandal tied to Georgia senator Ronald Gillespie and pharmaceutical lobbyist Eric Morrison, discovers that Morrison’s name crops up when he looks into Jayla’s situation. Jayla becomes a target of powerful men seeking her father’s research, and when Brixton gets in the way, he too becomes a target. Coincidence plays a large role in this rote tale of avarice and ruthlessness. (June)