With every one of his ten novels a New York Times bestseller, emergency medicine
physician Michael Palmer is recognized by critics and fans worldwide as a master
of medical suspense. Now Palmer delivers a relentless thriller that slices to our
deepest fears with surgical precision-a tale as timely as it is terrifying, as harrowing
as it is plausible. Welcome to The Society.
At the headquarters of Boston’s Eastern
Quality Health, the wealthy and powerful CEO is brutally murdered. She’s not the
first to die-nor the last. A vicious serial killer is on the loose and the victims
have one thing in common: they are all high-profile executives in the managed care
industry. Dr. Will Grant is an overworked and highly dedicated surgeon. He has experienced
firsthand the outrages of a system that cares more about the bottom line than about
the life-and-death issues of patients. As a member of the Hippocrates Society, Will
seeks to reclaim the profession of medicine from the hundreds of companies profiting
wildly by controlling the decisions that affect the delivery of care. But the doctor’s
determination has attracted a dangerous zealot who will stop at nothing to make Will
his ally. Soon Will is both a suspect and a victim, a pawn in a deadly endgame. Then,
in one horrible moment, Will’s professional and personal worlds are destroyed and
his very life placed in peril.
Rookie detective Patty Moriarity is in danger of
being removed from her first big case-the managed care killings. To save her career,
she has no choice but to risk trusting Will, knowing he may well be the killer she
is hunting. Together they have little to go on except the knowledge that the assassin
is vengeful, cunning, ruthless-and may not be working alone. That-and a cryptic
message that grows longer with each murder: a message Grant and Moriarity must decipher
if they don’t want to be the next victims.
