It’s spring in Buffalo, New York. At sprawling St. Paul’s Hospital, new interns rush through the halls, staff doctors scramble to catch their protégés’ mistakes, and everyone is aware of one unrelenting threat: A new and vicious strain of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) has hit America hard and is menacing the hospital like a wolf at the door. Wrapped in spacesuit-like garb to search for every possible source of infection, the hospital staff desperately tries to protect the lives of patients–and of each other. Yet despite St. Paul’s best efforts, people are dying. In this chilling medical landscape, no one notices the slight spike in the death rate in a palliative care ward. The prevailing attitude is “They’re supposed to die. That’s why we call them terminal.” When these same patients complain of terrifying near-death experiences, the hospital staff attributes it to delirium caused by medication. But when ER chief Dr. Earl Garnet gets blamed for the unexpected death of a patient, he defies protocol and opens an independent investigation. He quickly becomes suspicious that something far more sinister than disease is killing the hospital’s most vulnerable patients. For Garnet, looking into the deaths means rattling relationships that have been built over years–relationships with several men and women he once trusted but now must doubt. With the SARS epidemic spinning out of control and a storm of suspicion, fear, and mistrust raging through the corridors of St. Paul’s, the hospital is rocked by a horrifying crime: A respected researcher is found brutally murdered. And his executioner may be ready to strike again. With brilliant pacing, scalpel-sharp suspense, and an unmatched knowledge of the workings of a big-city hospital, Peter Clement is a thriller writer in a league of his own. In his new work, he takes us on a galvanizing, frightening, and constantly fascinating journey set on the front lines of medicine–where some dangers can be prevented and others can only be feared. From the Hardcover edition.**

When ER doctor Earl Garnet discovers the hospital's Chief Administrator murdered with a cardiac needle, he immediately becomes one of the suspects. Not every doctor is skilled with a cardiac needle, and Garnet is. Attempting to clear his name by identifying the real killer, Garnet also becomes the next target. And his investigation embroils him in a sinister conspiracy that threatens his whole medical world. Medical Thriller by Peter Clement; originally published by Fawcett

In a small upstate New York town, an idyllic lake yields a ghastly discovery when the skeletal remains of a young woman missing for 27 years are pulled from the icy depth – along with unmistakable evidence of her murder. Suddenly, the long-dormant case of Kelly McShane Braden’s mysterious disappearance is reactivated. And for two devastated men, dark emotions and disturbing secrets will also rise to the surface.

Dr. Earl Garnet encounters a deadly bacteria at University Hospital—one that is killing victims who are in some way connected. A nurse dies horrifically and Dr. Garnet’s own wife is gravely ill. While the surrounding community panics, the staff is quarantined—most likely with the sociopath who has masterminded the super-resistant strain and who promises to infect fifty more people immediately. Medical Thriller by Peter Clement; originally published by FawcettFrom Publishers WeeklyDr. Earl Garnet, St. Paul Hospital's ER chief, is accused of a tragic oversight after a nurse, initially complaining of flulike symptoms, mysteriously dies while under his care. Garnet suspects the cause is a "superbug," a lethal mix of Legionella and staph, resistant to antibiotics. Panic sets in as the number of cases rises, and soon the hospital is placed under quarantine and overrun by police, the media and the National Guard, which leaves Garnet little time to search for a common link among the victims. However, Garnet's wife, an obstetrician at nearby University Hospital, has a hunch that the deaths may be the work of "The Phantom," someone rumored to deliberately infect hospital employees known for their unkind treatment of patients. Clement's (Lethal Practice) own background as a physician comes across in his use of technical terminology and ability to capture hospital politics, which adds to the terror. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. From the Inside FlapBREEDING GROUND When a nurse in Buffalo dies at St. Paul's Hospital of a once-treatable bacteria, Dr. Earl Garnet and his colleagues try to remain calm. They track the origin of the sickness to University Hospital. But as the infection rages out of control there and more people fall gravely ill--including Garnet's own wife--Earl uncovers a shocking connection between the victims. KILLING GROUND Throughout the community, panic and paranoia spread as wildly as the outbreak itself, and the entire University Hospital staff is quarantined. Yet the mastermind who created this deadly superresistant strain may be someone they know, someone locked within the barricades. Now the sociopath has threatened to infect fifty more people. And that will be only the beginning. . . . DEATH ROUNDS No one captures the complex workings of an urban hospital like former ER physician Dr. Peter Clement. His new medical thriller ranges from the realm of microbiology to raw, human rage--in a plot so chillingly authentic it could be happening right now. . . .

Several patients die each day at St. Paul 's Hospital, a sprawling complex in Buffalo, N.Y., that takes on the most high-risk cases, including victims of the SARS virus. A few more deaths a week would hardly even be noticed. But hospital vice-president Dr. Earl Garnet, star of Clement's enjoyable line of medical thrillers, perks up when he hears about a strange circumstance in the hospital's cancer wing: a few days before they died, many of the patients reported out-of-body near-death experiences. Someone, Garnet determines, has been taking cancer patients to the brink of death and tape-recording their observations before briefly bringing them back to life. Suspects include the hospital's chaplain, Jimmy Fitzpatrick, who has been lobbying for years to get St. Paul's to relax its policy on withholding pain medication to terminal patients; Monica Yablonsky, the head nurse on the cancer ward whose prickly, unhelpful demeanor makes Garnet wary; and Dr. Steward Deloram, St. Paul's critical care expert who has also done extensive research into near-death experiences. The action in Clement's sixth hospital-based thriller (Mortal Remains, etc.) moves briskly and without an overload of medical jargon. Despite several indistinguishable characters and a few dead-end plot lines-Clement does little with the SARS element after an initial buildup-this entry keeps the author on an ascending trajectory in the genre.

Dr. Terry Ryder is special advisor to the President on bioterror preparedness; he has spent a decade attempting to anticipate which microbes might be weaponized and unleashed. When patients begin to present with slight tremors and numbness in their limbs, it takes him a while to realize that this is an attack. The answers he seeks elude him, and dark episodes from his past appear connected to the mystery. Medical Thriller by Peter Clement, M.D.; originally published by Belgrave House

In the heat of a passionate encounter, ecstasy suddenly turns to terror for renowned geneticist and TV personality Dr. Kathleen Sullivan. Stricken by a brain hemorrhage, she is rendered completely paralyzed and speechless . . . but still utterly aware; a prisoner inside her own body. Kathleen is rushed to a Manhattan hospital, her chances of survival slim. Even if she pulls through, the likelihood that she’ll sustain permanent brain damage is near one hundred percent. But neither outcome can compare to the insidious fate in store for her masterminded by the very people entrusted with saving her life. As her lover, ER chief Richard Steele, watches and waits for a miracle, Kathleen becomes a pawn in a clandestine plot that runs deeper than medical politics–and reaches into the highest echelons of power at New York City Hospital. Placed in the hands, and at the mercy, of revered Chief of Neurosurgery Dr. Tony Hamlin, Kathleen descends into a waking nightmare. Powerless to resist the sinister experiments she is subjected to, and unable to cry out for help, she must fight desperately to communicate her tortured, trapped thoughts to Steele–before her tormentors can carry their bizarre and potentially lethal work to its completion. Ruthlessly determined to achieve their goals, the secret cabal of ambitious physicians will go to any length to avoid discovery, defy the law, and make medical history at all costs . . . even the human life they are sworn to preserve. For anyone who has ever had a mortal fear of hospitals, and the sense of powerlessness that often transpires within their cold, sterile corridors, Peter Clement’s Critical Condition will provide chilling new nightmares–along with infectious suspense. From the Hardcover edition.