The Boston Brahmin

Liz Maguire-Murphy, DrPH, associate professor of behavioral health at the Bethsaida Medical Center in Baltimore was finalizing a grant proposal to the NIH when she learned that her mother Jill had been trying to reach her. Jill had received information about a certain Jack Delaney, a man who was purported to be the father who had abandoned her and her mother in Boston some seventy years ago. Jill had also received threatening phone calls referencing Liz and her children, and was terrified that something would happen to them if she didn’t do exactly what the caller demanded: refrain from notifying the police, have her DNA tested and submit results to Ancestry.com. Jill begged Liz to accompany her to Boston to explore the city that Jill vaguely remembered from her early childhood and to validate as much as possible the information that she had received. She was especially concerned that 'Jack Delaney' would have been involved in nefarious activities that would hurt her and Liz if these became known.Liz was not eager to make the trip. Her husband Luis had been murdered two years earlier, leaving her with five children, a budding career, an expensive house to manage, and not enough money to meet her obligations. To take time off to visit Boston on what felt like a wild goose chase was not how she wanted to spend her Spring Break. Besides, how reliable was the memory of a five-year-old, the age that Jill had been when her father disappeared?In the material Jill had received, mixed in with ancient views of life in Boston in the 1950s were recent photos of Liz and her children, some taken in Baltimore and others at the haciendas in Colombia that had been her husband’s ancestral home. Were the human traffickers and drug dealers who were responsible for Luis’s death now threatening Liz’s family? Jill was not the only one who was terrified.With support from her colleagues at the BMC and the timely assistance of an expert in recovered memory, Liz was persuaded to go to Boston, especially when handsome Declan O’Toole, a voice from the past who had been very helpful in dealing with Luis’s death also offered his assistance. Declan had romantic feelings for her and was an expert on the international drug scene.When Josefina, Liz’s long-time nanny was captured by ICE, the already complicated situation took a much darker turn. How Liz managed to remain sane and reasonably solvent while untangling the mystery of Jill’s father’s disappearance and rescuing Josefina is the story of The Boston Brahmin, the fifth novel in the 'Liz Maguire' series.