Is medicine's greatest breakthrough also the world's most efficient killing machine?After a decade of development, Drexel Hospital's cutting-edge Electronic Health Records system is about to become the national standard and revolutionize health care. Housing the real-time medical records of every American, the EHR system will enable doctors to access records with a keystroke and issue life-or-death medical orders with a finger swipe.

No one wants the EHR to succeed more than Hugh Torrence, a former NSA honcho who sees the system as a tool for unimaginable and unaccountable power. The only thing standing in his way is a loose-knit group of Drexel employees with conflicting agendas and questionable loyalties-including Dr.

Mason Fischer, a physician with a taste for intrigue and a shadowy past; a street-wise techie named RT; and an internal medicine resident, Dr. Carrie Mumsford, the daughter of the hospital's president.

While they search for answers, the suspicious patient deaths keep mounting as the target on their back grows larger. "A beautifully written, complex mix of medical drama, espionage story, and hi-tech skulduggery, Coded to Kill is a thrilling read under the guidance of someone who knows what he is talking about, and never fails to enthrall with its detail and deft plotting.

"-Iain Pears, author of An Instance of the Fingerpost and The Dream of Scipio"Dr. Marschall Runge gives us both a heart-stopping thriller and a searing indictment of the degree to which technology has sapped the soul of medicine and handed it to the technocracy.

"-Holden Thorp, Editor-in-Chief, Science Family of Journals. .