A ripped-from-the-headlines medical thriller from the creator of the genre After performing a post-mortem on a young college student who'd been recently treated by a chiropractor, Jack Stapleton, a New York City medical examiner, decides to explore alternative medicine. What makes people seek help from Eastern philosophies or even faith healers to cure their illnesses? Meanwhile his old college friend, Shawn Doherty, a renowned archaeologist involved in a dig at St Peter's in Rome has made a startling discovery with huge ecclesiastical and medical implications. When Kevin Murray, another old college, and now Roman Catholic Bishop of New York, gets wind of Shawn's findings he's desperate to keep them from the public and to disassociate himself from Shawn. Kevin turns to his old friend Jack to help protect this explosive secret - one with the power to change lives forever. Biographies Doctor and author Robin Cook is widely credited with introducing the word ‘medical’ to the thriller genre, and over twenty years after the publication of his breakthrough novel, Coma, he continues to dominate the category he created. Cook has successfully combined medical fact with fantasy to produce a over twenty-seven international bestsellers, including Outbreak (1987), Terminal (1993),Contagion (1996), Chromosome 6 (1997) and most recently Foreign Body (2008).