Deadly Choice by S Lee Manning
After her daughter bleeds out from a miscarriage in Texas, Patricia Scott kills the doctor who had failed to perform a medically necessary abortion.
Her next target is the attorney who’d advised against the abortion out of personal ambition.
Lizzie Vaughn, an investigator with her own dark past, is hired by the doctor’s widow after police label her husband’s death a suicide.
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Lizzie’s hunt for the killer becomes more complicated and dangerous when she is also tapped to find a young woman with a heart condition who has been kidnapped to prevent her from ending a life-threatening pregnancy and whose fate intertwines with Patricia’s plans for revenge.
Can Lizzie and Patricia set aside their individual quests to prevent another tragedy?
My Review
A couple of years ago I read A Spark Of Light by Jodi Picoult, which deals with the subject of abortion. At a women’s reproductive health services clinic, a gunman is holding staff and patients hostage, including his own daughter. It looks at the pros and cons of abortion from both sides. I found it very upsetting.
Deadly Choice is totally different, though it deals with the same subject. It’s a crime novel, set in Texas, where it’s now illegal to carry out an abortion unless the woman is in imminent danger of dying. The Combatants for the Unborn (an anti-abortion group) are portrayed as lunatics, especially John Peterson who would kill to prevent an abortion, but is happy to spread his seed amongst the women he picks up in bars. It made me very angry.
Any doctor deemed to have crossed the line can be prosecuted, as can anyone who helps the woman go to another state where the rules are less rigid. Who are these people who decide who lives and who dies? Who lets a mother die over her unborn foetus? This is about women’s rights over their own bodies.
I loved private investigator Lizzie, and her sidekick Murphy, but I hated Patricia initially. I think it’s because she has guns and goes hunting, but claims she loves animals. You can’t be both in my book. After her daughter dies she takes the law into her own hands. She has a list of those she blames, and she’s going to use it to seek them out and kill them. Everyone has a gun (it’s the US) and this feels very alien to us here in the UK.
The same goes for the draconian abortion laws in Texas, and the fanatical behaviour of the Combatants for the Unborn seems ridiculously far-fetched. But apparently it isn’t. I even asked my husband (he’s good on US politics). How can this be real? How can this be happening in the 21st century? But it is, right now.
In Deadly Choice there is no grey area. The pro-lifers are all portrayed as religious nutcases. We have no sympathy with any of them. Peterson I just don’t get (he’s a total hypocrite), Brenda Phillips will do anything to become a Senator (or even President), Georgina Crane is another fanatic, though she has a nice cat (probably her only redeeming feature). Dr Tom Martin put his career before his patient’s life.
Deadly Choice is a thriller with a serious message. It moves at a cracking pace and jumps from the narrative as seen through the eyes of the various main characters – Lizzie, Patricia, John, Brenda and Isabella who is trying to get out of state with her daughter, to terminate the pregnancy that will kill her. A brilliant read that will leave you thinking.
Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours
About the Author
AN AWARD-WINNING WRITER, S. LEE Manning is the author of international thrillers, Trojan Horse, Nerve Attack, and Bloody Soil. In 2023, Bloody Soil won the award for Best Genre Fiction Novel from Independent Publishers of New England. She spent two years as managing editor of Law Enforcement Communications before embarking on a subsequent career as an attorney that spanned from a first-tier New York law firm, to working for the State of New Jersey, to solo practice until retiring from law to write full-time.
Manning and her husband J. B. Manning—the award-winning author of Richter the Mighty—do talks, presentations, and YouTube videos as A Killing Couple and live in Vermont with their very vocal cats, Xiao and Dmitri. S. Lee Manning is currently working on her next Kolya Petrov thriller. For the latest updates on her novels, follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and visit
sleemanning.com.
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