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Written by Crichton as Jeffery Hudson, the novel follows Boston pathologist John Berry investigating the death of a young woman after an abortion. He races to clear a friend accused of the crime by finding what really happened.
Set when abortion was illegal, the book exposes how prohibition pushed the procedure into danger and hypocrisy. The mystery doubles as a study of the medical and moral costs of the ban.
Crichton renders the hierarchy, politics, and cover-your-own instincts of a teaching hospital in clinical detail. Institutional self-protection becomes as much the antagonist as any individual.
The solution turns on autopsy findings, timelines, and medical logic rather than conventional sleuthing. This procedural, evidence-first method prefigures Crichton's later science-driven fiction.