Mark Dolan is reinventing himself again.

He was a major-league baseball pitcher, a career cut short by an arm injury, and then he became a freelance detective, a career often marked by bloodshed and broken bones. Now, he hopes to take up the quiet life of a suburban husband and father.

His plans explode when his wife contracts a rare virus while working overseas. She is treated with a new drug, marketed by a major pharmaceutical company, and she quickly plunges into a deep coma. While she clings to life, Dolan embarks on a quest to find out more about the drug she took and the people who produced it.

The journey takes him from New York to Washington to a ramshackle testing center in Miami and then ever deeper into the seamy underside of the US drug industry.

The stakes get higher when a relentless killer, hired by the drug companies, arrives to put an end to Dolan's search. He and the killer stalk each other from city to city, heading for a final showdown that can only end with one of them dead.