Crime Scene by Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman

When an injury ended Clay Edison's dream of a career in the NBA, he had to find another path for his life.  He ends up as a deputy coroner, his job to attend suspicious deaths and then pronounce the cause of death, accident, suicide, murder.  When he gets the call to a death of an elderly man at the bottom of a staircase, he assumes it will be an accident call.  Walter Rennert, the victim, lived alone and had little human contact.  A stair fall is a common home accident and it is easy for it to end in a death depending on how the victim falls and whether there is help available.

But the victim's daughter, Tatiana, is there, and she insists it is no accident.  She says her father was a psychologist but was forced out of his profession after a study he was working on ended up with bad publicity after a subject in the study was accused and jailed for killing a young woman.  The implication was that the study was in some way responsible for her death and Rennert was left unemployed and bitter.  Edison thinks that is unusual but when Tatiana tells him that another person associated with the study died some years before in the exact same way he starts to wonder.

Edison leaves the case open, even though his supervisor is unhappy about it.  He starts to investigate the case more deeply and he gets drawn into the lives of Walter, the other death victim, and the man who went to prison for the murder associated with the study.  Although most of what Clay uncovers is in line with an accidental death, some of it keeps him searching deeper and deeper.  Can he uncover the truth?

This book is a collaboration between Jonathan Kellerman and his son, Jesse.  The book works well with no disjointed narrative as can sometimes happen in a collaboration.  The main character, Edison, is likable and I'd be interested to read another novel about his work.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.