Deadly RX Prescribes Enjoyment from Murder

Everyone has to deal with pharmacies at some point in their life. Deadly RX by Renee Horowitz is a prescription for enjoyment. She asks the question, "What would happen if a pharmacist was thrown into a murder? This is a unique perspective for mystery novels. Usually, the main character is a private investigator, reporter or medical examiner.

In Deadly RX, Ruth Morris works at a busy pharmacy in a supermarket chain in Scottsdale, Airz. A clinic down the street performs abortions. The girls having the abortions come to the pharmacy for pain medication, blood clotting medicine and an antibiotic. In the story, Amy Brookman has an abortion and comes to Ruth's pharmacy for her prescriptions. She lives with her aunt, Virginia, who also accompanies her to the pharmacy. Ruth dispenses the medicine and gives instructions on how to take them. She tells the girl to take the purple ones to clot the blood. The next day, Amy ends up dead in an apparent mistake by the pharmacist. Ruth's reputation is on the line, but her friends believe she might have been too busy and made the mistake. Amy died from excessive bleeding. She took a drug that was a blood thinner instead of the blood-clotting drug.

Ruth finds herself the defendant of a wrongful death suit and tries to find out how Amy could have taken the wrong drug. While she doubts herself, she comes to realize that she gave the right medicine to Amy and that someone must have deliberately switched the medication. She and her pharmacist friend Michael search pharmacies throughout Arizona to find the people in Amy's life that had access to the blood-thinning drug. At the same time, her life is in danger as more of the truth is revealed. Ruth finds out the baby wasn't from the boyfriend but someone else in Amy's life, which gave Amy motivation for the abortion.