Customer Reviews

With a Vengeance

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Maggie is an over-achiever - working as an Emergency Department nurse, an EMT, and a medic on a SWAT team. Life is pretty good for Maggie. She is dedicated to her work and enjoys belonging to a team. Her co-workers have become her friends and family - replacing her abusive alcoholic ex-cop father and his string of bimbo wives. She also has a cop lover who is great in bed.

Then Maggie discovers that someone is killing the bad guys - cleaning out the gene pool. Drunk drivers, gang-members, and abusive fathers are ending dead from non-life threatening injuries. Nobody seems to notice except Maggie and she needs proof that her suspicions are real. She no one to turn to - because the killer has to be one of her friends. What Maggie doesn't know is that the killer knows that she is investigating the deaths.

Maggie is a great character - she is smart, mouthy, and caring. The ER scenes and SWAT team deployments are grippingly real. The story is exciting and taut.

This is Eileen Dreyer's first book in a while. It's been worth the wait - but I hope the next one comes out sooner.

The city of St. Louis and its County join forces to form a first rate SWAT Team that services the region. The only person on the group who doesn't carry a gun is the medic Maggie O' Brien. Maggie and her team are called in to break up a hostage situation with the victim being Maggie's boyfriend Sean Delaney and the perpetrator is a paranoid schizophrenic Montana Bob, a former FBI agent.

She talks Montana Bob down but he suddenly dies in the hospital. Maggie wonders if somebody killed him after he told her the names of three other people. When she seeks the trio, she learns that the two gangbangers and the pediophile also died in her hospital where she works as a trauma nurse. Maggie starts collecting evidence involving a silent conspiracy between people she knows in the hospital and the police department. She just has to figure out where to deliver her information to before she is killed or framed for murder.

It has been too many years since a crime thriller from Eileen Dreyer was released, but WITH A VENGEANCE is well worth the wait. The heroine is an admirable person with a subtle sense of humor who lives in perpetual crisis mode that would break many people, but she thrives on it. Her decision to root out the perpetrators knowing she will be shunned by her peers or killed is courageous but she still willingly pays the price. This is a first rate action packed medical thriller on a par with Robin Cook.

Harriet Klausner

i could not put this mystery book down and was holding my breath until the very end! the main character, maggie o'brien is a hospital nurse and medic on a SWAT team. you are given a glimpse into the world of hostage negotation and also into the frenzy of a hospital trauma unit. looming big in this fast-paced story is maggie's father, a cop no longer 'officially' on the police force and her boyfriend sean, who is a policeman. i found myself questioning how would i deal with truely 'bad' people given the opportunity to work 'outside' of the law and this is one of the issues maggie has to resolve.

In a profession where there is no such thing as a dull day, Maggie O'Brien is an emergency room nurse as well as a medic for the St. Louis SWAT team. The child of a violent ex-cop father, Maggie refuses to carry a gun when on duty as part of the SWAT team, choosing instead to employ her negotiating skills.

Compassionate and smart, Maggie is a credit not only to her gender, but to her profession as well. And when crazy Montana Bob holds a wounded police officer hostage after threatening to boil a neighborhood cheerleader, it is Maggie who comes to the rescue. But when Bob dies of superficial injuries, Maggie begins to wonder if the certifiable former FBI agent wasn't hit with a moment of sanity when he divulged some information shortly before he died.

Readers cannot help but feel an affinity for Maggie as she jumps headfirst into every situation, whether it is an ER trauma, or a shakedown of a meth lab. And while her on again off again relationship with childhood pal and cop Sean Delaney adds a touch of romance, it is the issue of whether or not Maggie can trust him, that gives their relationship a very real feel.

At the core of Maggie's hectic life is her belief that someone is killing the less than stellar citizens of St. Louis, including delusional Bob. Some patients, including those under her care, have died for no apparent reason, and many of them were on the List, a running list of names kept by the emergency room personnel naming the people really getting on everyone's bad side. Intense and highly suspenseful, Maggie's search for the killer of killers earns her pariah status in both her jobs and puts both her reputation and life on the line, as she is considered a possible suspect. Readers beware as you ride alongside Maggie in her gripping search for the killer(s) among her friends and lover as no one is above suspicion. ...

I read the book in one sitting. I could not put it down and my mind was going and going to figure it out. And at 3:18 a.m. I finished then reread parts of it totally enthralled for the next two hours. It was very well written.

Maggie O'Brien holds three jobs; she is young,driven with energy and cares about people which helps her to do well at all three high pressured jobs. Her sometime boyfriend and best friend, Sean, is there for the release and but not always the support she needs. Her father, Tommy, is never there for the support. He provides some of the high stress level she was forced to live with.

I really liked the action in this story and Maggie was either causing it or in the middle of it. The best scenes were when she was with SWAT unit. Her character was very well written. All of them were.

Negatives for the book are few: I really couldn't understand the layout of the ER rooms so if you read the book try to get the blueprints of the ER as you read the scenes,lots of characters to follow and two questions at the end that I am still pondering over.

I hope there is another book of Maggie O'Brien and her supporters.

This is the first time I have read a book by this author. It is one of the best suspense/drama novels I have read in a while. This story has everything one could want in a mystery: a dame with a solid head on her shoulders, a hunk, murders galore, a gay doctor, an overbearing father who is an ex-cop, and a homeless psycho was used to be an FBI agent. The plot and storyline are both great and the action doesn't let up. There is also a bit of humor sprinkled in for good measure.

Ms. Dreyer writes a believable hard-hitting novel. Despite all that has happened in our heroine's life, she comes through victorious and with a lot of class. The ending was not a real surprise, but it was pulse pounding action from the first page to the last. I am sorry I have missed this author's books and will be looking for them in the future.

Nurse Maggie O'Brien has a very active life! She is an Emergency Department nurse at Blymore Memorial Hospital, a medic on a SWAT team, and the daughter of the somewhat notorious police officer named Thomas "Tommy" O'Brien.

When she finds evidence that someone close to her, perhaps a team member or co-worker, could be dispensing their own type of justice, she is torn between loyalty and what is right. It seemed as though the bad scum of St. Louis that come to the ER ends up dead. It also looks as though it has been going on for quite some time. Maggie knew that if she looked for signs of possible murder of the bad guys that many of her co-workers would consider it betrayal. She would lose many friends. However, when Maggie found out some innocent people were also dying, she could not stand by and do nothing. As people in the county and her colleagues turn against Maggie, she continues her search for proof of multiple murders. As people get nervous about her investigation, Maggie begins being framed.

Reporter Susan Jacobsmeyer has been assigned to do an article or series on Maggie's life. Her career skyrocketed with a single photo shot of Maggie, as a SWAT member, clutching a burned boy as she tries to save his life. When patients that Maggie tend to begin dropping like flies, or cicadas, she smells front page material. The two team up to hunt for answers. Their only real clues had come from a paranoid schizophrenic patient, Montana Bob, just before he died.

*** This author is awesome! Author Eileen Dreyer is a nurse herself. To make this novel as realistic as possible, she actually trained (not just observed) with some of the SWAT teams and firefighters in her area.

I just do not find books as great as this one often and I cannot recommend it highly enough! You do not have to be in the police or medical professions to find yourself holding your breath and sitting on the edge of your seat as you quickly read to see what happens next! WITH A VENGEANCE is a roller coaster ride that hooks its readers on page one and refuses to let go! ***

REVIEWED BY DETRA FITCH.

At Blymore Memorial, patients who shouldn't be dying are dropping like flies. Maggie O'Brien--ER nurse and SWAT team medic, stumbles across this information almost by accident. And when she begins to suspect the worst--that someone among her friends and co-workers is killing off the scum of society--she finds herself a target. As she doggedly pursues her investigation, Maggie faces anonymous threats, an abusive father, a nosy reporter, and the awful possibility that her beloved best friend and sometimes lover, Sean Delaney, might be part of a shocking conspiracy.

With her latest thrilling suspense novel, author Eileen Dreyer has reached a new high. Fascinating characters, intense emotion, and gritty medical and police detail combine for a powerful page-turner, although sometimes I had to put it down because it was overwhelming. Sometimes I had to take a break just to remind myself that I wasn't sweltering in a St. Louis summer with Maggie. But I always came back, and the ultra-satifying ending made me glad I did. I hope to see Maggie O'Brien in future books--there's a lot yet to be mined from her character.

Not since her BAD MEDICINE has Dryer provided readers with an intense tale of complex depth as is found in WITH A VENGEANCE. Clearly her on-the-job training with a real SWAT team of medics allowed her to provide readers with the kind of tale we have come to expexct from this master storyteller. Though many may know her as romance writer Kathleen Korbel, she provides her mystery readers with slivers of romance without losing sight of the true focus of her story-suspense!!! This is one protagonist that won't be easily forgotten. Strong smart women heroines proving who is really the weaker gender!!!
This is one of those books once started can't be set aside, so set a block of time so you won't be interupted. When you enter Dryer's world all else seems secondary. This is a page turner not to be missed by serious readers of suspense/mystery. A 10 star read on 5 star scale!!

I guess I am swimming against the flow, but I'm not liking this book. The author is cramming way too much trauma into each page, so much so it is hard to follow. Then at the end of a day our heroine goes home and [makes love violently] without any soothing or loving talk and wrecking her home in the process. It's too much to absorb. And the little over the dining table scene with her father and bimbo #7 was a bit much and unreal.Give me a Robin Cook whodunit any day.