Night Medicine by Axel Brand
Night Medicine is a one of a series of detective novels that follows the exploits of Lieutenant Joe Sonntag of the Milwaukee Police Department that are set in the late 1940s. The title refers to the kinds of medicine that are illegal, such as abortions and assisted suicide, and therefore often provided in secret. The police in this novel are called in when the patients of such "night medicine" die from their treatment. It starts when a young woman's body is found drained of blood lying at the Milwaukee City Zoo. The pathologist believes she had a botched abortion that caused her to bleed out, but there is no clue as to who washed and dressed the girl's body and left her there in the zoo next to the big cats cages, arranged almost as if in a funeral home on a bed of ferns.
In the 1940s, abortion and suicide were considered murder, and those who assisted in them were murderers. When a patient died, the police were called in to find those involved. During the course of his investigation, Sonntag deals with not only legal, but also ethical and political issues, and the novel provides a window into the debate at that time over a woman's right to choose as he investigates the death of this young woman.
Axel Brand is a pseudonym for Richard Shaw Wheeler (1935 – 2019) who is known for his novels set in the American West.
Night Medicine is the third of four detective novels set in Milwaukee that he wrote in 2015 as Axel Brand.
