After losing his Midwestern ophthalmology practice to a for-profit medical giant, and then his family to a commuter airline tragedy, Dr. John Stapleton's life is in ashes. Abandoning his home and practice, Stapleton retrains as a medical examiner and relocates to a city that suits his changed perspective: the cold concrete maze of New York City.
Stapleton thinks he is past pain and past caring, but as a series of lethal illneses — capped by a particularly deadly outbreak of a rare strain of influenza — strikes the young, the old and the innocent, his suspicions are aroused. And when the apparent epicenter of these outbreaks is revealed to be a hospital controlled by the same for-profit giant that cannibalized his old ophthalmology practice, Stapleton fears he has stumbled upon a conspiracy of catastrophic proportions.
Solving the mystery leads to his unlikely pairing, both professionally and personally, with Terese Hagen, an art director at a hot Madison Avenue advertising firm. And as he gets closer to discovering the real explanation behind the killer contagions, he finds his life is on the line — for there are those who will pay any price to keep the diabolical truth from being revealed.
Description:
After losing his Midwestern ophthalmology practice to a for-profit medical giant, and then his family to a commuter airline tragedy, Dr. John Stapleton's life is in ashes. Abandoning his home and practice, Stapleton retrains as a medical examiner and relocates to a city that suits his changed perspective: the cold concrete maze of New York City.
Stapleton thinks he is past pain and past caring, but as a series of lethal illneses — capped by a particularly deadly outbreak of a rare strain of influenza — strikes the young, the old and the innocent, his suspicions are aroused. And when the apparent epicenter of these outbreaks is revealed to be a hospital controlled by the same for-profit giant that cannibalized his old ophthalmology practice, Stapleton fears he has stumbled upon a conspiracy of catastrophic proportions.
Solving the mystery leads to his unlikely pairing, both professionally and personally, with Terese Hagen, an art director at a hot Madison Avenue advertising firm. And as he gets closer to discovering the real explanation behind the killer contagions, he finds his life is on the line — for there are those who will pay any price to keep the diabolical truth from being revealed.