When the lifeless body of activist Yolanda Fiore is found at the bottom of the stairs of the Revere Public Library, transplanted Berkeley physicist Gloria Lamerino makes the case for murder quickly. The woman was recently fired from a lab where she investigated the use of boric acid in nuclear reactors. And when the son of a friend is accused of the crime, Gloria is determined to solve the mystery.
The intelligent, provocative Yolanda had a knack for stirring up trouble -- but was her murder connected to falsified data at the lab, her zeal to stop the expansion of the local library, or even her research into a fifty-year-old murder? Gloria's solid but divergent theories each begin to unlock some dangerous doors, shedding new light on a case of chemistry and crime involving means, motive and a killer's miscalculation.