#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Dr. Kay Scarpetta undertakes a harrowing chase through cyberspace and the all-too-real streets of New York City, leading her much too close to home.

"Cornwell remains the master of incorporating real-life science into pulse-pounding fiction."--The Philadelphia Inquirer

IN DEVELOPMENT AS THE ORIGINAL SERIES SCARPETTA STARRING NICOLE KIDMAN AND JAMIE LEE CURTIS

Leaving behind her private forensic pathology practice in Charleston, South Carolina, Kay Scarpetta accepts an assignment in New York City, where the NYPD has asked her to examine an injured man on Bellevue Hospital's psychiatric prison ward. The handcuffed and chained patient, Oscar Bane, has specifically asked for her, and when she literally has her gloved hands on him, he begins to talk--and the story he has to tell turns out to be one of the most bizarre she has ever heard.

The injuries, he says, were sustained in the course of a murder . . . that he did not commit. Is Bane a criminally insane stalker who has fixed on Scarpetta? Or is his paranoid tale true, and it is he who is being spied on, followed and stalked by the actual killer? The one thing Scarpetta knows for certain is that a woman has been tortured and murdered--and more violent deaths will follow. . . .