Recovering from a heart transplant, Terry is carefully following the strict regimen necessary to keep his new heart from rejection. A week after a newspaper article is published that features his meteoric career and long-awaited transplant, Graciela Torres shows up on Terry's boat and shatters his quiet life.

A nurse, Graciela is bright enough to figure out that Terry was the recipient of her dead sister's heart. Gloria Torres had been killed in a convenience store robbery and Graciela has come to plead with Terry to try to find the killer. After several months, the LAPD shelved the file as one more unsolved crime.

Fully aware that he has no business getting involved in such a stressful undertaking, Terry succumbs to the emotion of feeling that he owes Gloria's family something for her heart. So he agrees to look into it. The first people he antagonizes are the investigating officers in the LAPD.

How does an unsolved convenience store robbery turn into a crime by a serial killer? Because of Terry's physical limitations, the investigation becomes a great mental exercise comparing and contrasting seemingly unrelated detail. In a way, he is reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes (without the cocaine habit) as he constructs his theories. The novel moves at a slow pace as Terry works his way through the links that will eventually solve a crime that is a small part of a much larger puzzle.

Using a multitude of characters, Michael Connelly has crafted a fiendishly clever and original story that keeps twisting and turning unexpectedly. The characters have depth and warmth and the reader moves through the story learning about the organ transplant program and the recovery problems of a heart recipient.

Blood Work is a refreshing thriller with a noted absence of graphic violence. Slow paced it may be, but it is gripping as well, and garners high marks for inventiveness.

--Thea Davis