John Winston Flint, prominent Philadelphia physician, has been systematically tortured to death. Every bone in his body has been shattered -- even the joints of his fingers and toes reduced to powder.
The doctor's hidden side is revealed when a police search turns up a collection of sadomasochistic videos in which Flint himself was the star performer -- and horrifyingly, one shows a brutal rape and apparent murder.
Fogarty and his friend and colleague, medical examiner Josef Tanaka, also discover that Flint was selling massive quantities of illegal steroids to hardcore bodybuilders. In a world where total physical prowess is the ultimate goal, and strength truly equals power, performance-enhancing chemicals are more than worth their weight in gold.
Nothing in Fogarty's experience has prepared him for this case, where each secret he uncovers seems to lead him farther from the truth, and where the darkest secret of all is written in the blood of two drug-enhanced, steroid supermen.