  It’s Mardi Gras in New Orleans and thousands of tourists have flocked to the city, paralyzing traffic and jamming the French Quarter with drunken crowds and garbage. City officials are hoping for record crowds and the greatest economic boost since Katrina. Alexandra Destephano, a nurse and legal counsel for the prestigious Crescent City Medical Center, is happily anticipating her third Carnival Season. Alex is eagerly awaiting her date with dashing art historian Mitch Landry to the Endymion Extravaganza, the biggest Mardi Gras Ball in New Orleans on Saturday evening. But things change when Alex is stat-paged to the medical center to learn from her former surgeon husband Robert Bonnet that Grace Raccine, a patient and the first lady of Louisiana, has been found unconscious in her bed covered with blood. |
 It is hotter than hell in New Orleans, and newly promoted NOPD Commander Jack Francoise is battling a horrific crime spree in the Vieux Carre in the August heat. At Crescent City Medical Center’s Psychiatric Pavilion, nursing staff are constantly doling out Thorazine Slurpees and Geodon shots to some of the most criminally insane and viciously psychotic patients in the South. Alexandra Destephano, a registered nurse and legal counsel for CCMC is concerned about inadequate staff and safety issues in The Pavilion and enlists former husband, dashing surgeon Robert Bonnet, to assist her to battle Lester Whitset, the odd and often bizarre Pavilion administrator. In the meantime, staff and patients are being brutally beaten and killed, and Alex must set aside her feelings about the chronic understaffing at CCMC and work with Jack, Robert, and others to bring the perpetrators to justice. |
 It’s a beautiful October day in the Crescent City, probably the most beautiful day of the year. Alexandra Destephano and Commander Jack Francoise are savoring the silence before Operation Fix America, a political summit that will bring the most powerful leaders in America to New Orleans. The calm is shattered when they learn of a lethal viral outbreak in the Crescent City Emergency Department where the unidentified virus has already claimed the lives of a political attachė and food service worker. When another tragic murder in the Vieux Carre claims the life of a young politician, the protėgė of Alex’s powerful grandfather, Congressman Adam Patrick Lee of Virginia, Jack becomes suspicious of numerous threats to the Crescent City. With the arrival of POTUS in less than 48 hours, Jack must learn to play well with the FBI and the Secret Service while Alex coordinates with medical leaders from the CDC, Tulane, LSU, and the University of Virginia to control the raging virus. |
Viral Intent is in the top 50 best sellers in medical thrillers.