There�s no good way to die, but there are alternative ways. Many were created to help people, particularly the terminally ill, those in serious, unmanageable pain, to assist in a death with dignity. Unfortunately, not all of those receiving the help may want it . . .

Anita Servi has a new job, but with the same problems: helping those who cannot find help elsewhere cope with living in a city that can't always afford to provide all they need. When those citizens are suffering because of age or race or income, when they find no alternatives, sometimes they turn to each other.

And sometimes they turn on each other. Then help becomes murder, and Anita Servi has to look into one friend's death as another begins to face her own.

Examining the lives of the elderly ill, Irene Marcuse continues to tell the stories that might be in our headlines, letting us see as she does so how they may all too quickly become our own.