Richard Kurtz is a surgeon with a growing practice, a luxury apartment on the East Side of Manhattan and a beautiful girlfriend. Lew Barent is a police detective. He has chronic migraine headaches, a son-in-law he can barely stand and a job that he's looking forward to leaving. Kurtz and Barent have solved two improbable murders at Easton Medical Center and neither of them are expecting a third, but when elderly philanthropist dreams that she's witnessed a murder and a young hospital administrator is found strangled in bed, Kurtz and Barent are drawn into a twisted tale of greed, conspiracy and long-simmering revenge