The Quiet Pill

Grayport, 1938. Disgraced ex-vice cop Abel Keene is hired to look into a series of deaths at the Sea Cliff Rest Home, where a dozen elderly residents have died quietly under the care of the philanthropic Avellion Pharmaceutical Trust. The official cause is always heart failure, but the timing is too perfect—each death occurs exactly three weeks after the patient begins a trial for Calmidolor, a revolutionary new syrup for senile anxiety. Keene discovers that Calmidolor contains a prodrug that is harmless to most, but in patients with a rare hepatic enzyme variant, it slowly converts into a digitalis-like toxin. The genius of the crime is that the toxin does not exist in the bottle, only in the victim—making any standard autopsy futile. As Keene fights against a police department that believes he is chasing ghosts and a corporation that has already shaped the narrative, he must find a way to prove that a silent, individualized murder weapon is still murder.