From the undisputed master of the med- ical thriller comes the story of a deadly epidemic spread not merely by microbes but by sinister sabotage--a terrifying cau- tionary tale for the millennium as the health care giants collide. After he loses first his midwestern ophthal- mology practice to a for-profit medical giant and then his family to a commuter airline tragedy, Dr. John Stapleton s life is transformed to ashes. Feeling less the golden boy than a jaded cynic, Stapleton retrains in forensic pathology and re- locates to find an uneasy niche for himself in a city that suits his changed perspective: the cold, indifferent, concrete maze of New York. Stapleton thinks he is past pain and past caring, but as a series of virulent and extremely lethal illnesses--capped by a particularly deadly outbreak of a rare strain of influenza--strikes the young, the old, and the innocent, his suspi- cions are aroused. When the apparent epicenters of these outbreaks are revealed to be hospitals and clinics controlled by the same for-profit giant that cannibalized his old ophthalmology practice, Stapleton fears he has stumbled upon a