Devil's Waltz (Alex Delaware, #7)

The doctors call it 'Munchausen syndrome by proxy,' the terrifying mental disorder that causes a parent to induce illness not in themselves but in their own children. Now, in his most frightening case, Dr. Delaware may have to prove that a child's own mother or father is making their twenty-one-month-old child, Cassie Jones, sick.

Cassie is bright, energetic, and the picture of health - most of the time. Yet her parents rush her to the E.R. night after night with medical symptoms no doctor can explain. Her parents seem sympathetic and deeply concerned. Her favorite nurse is a model of devotion. Child psychologist Alex Delaware is called in to investigate, and his instinct tells him that one of the parents may be a monster. Then a physician at the hospital is brutally murdered. And a second shadowy death is revealed. Alex and his friend, LAPD detective Milo Sturgis, have only hours to uncover the link between these shocking events and the fate of the innocent child.