The Inquisitor — Peter Clement

A new and vicious strain of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) has hit America hard--and is menacing St. Paul's Hospital in Buffalo, New York, like a wolf at the door. While the medical staff desperately try to protect their patients and one another, people are dying. In the meantime, no one notices the slight spike in the death rate in the ward for the terminally ill. But when ER chief Dr. Earl Garnet is blamed for a sudden fatality, he suspects that something far more sinister than disease is killing the hospital's most vulnerable patients. Defying protocol, he opens an independent investigation, rattling relationships with colleagues he once trusted. Then the hospital is rocked by a horrifying crime: a respected researcher is found brutally murdered. And his executioner may be ready to strike again.