Mark Hartmann, a consultant pathologist, is married to a barrister and the son-in-law of a judge. His secret vice is compulsive gambling, and mounting debts are starting to threaten his marriage. When he is asked to perform an autopsy on Millicent Sweet, a laboratory assistant, it seems a case like any other. Sweet was only twenty-two when she died of cancer. His initial findings are anything but typical, though, for she appears to have died of several different, aggressive tumors. Before he can discuss this with his colleagues, he is called away to a conference in Scotland, where he ends up sleeping with one of the sales reps. This action results in blackmail by a pharmaceutical company, which has videoed Hartmann’s excesses. They threaten to send the video to Hartmann’s wife—unless he falsifies his report on Sweet’s death. But they are not the only people interested in this. Millicent's father, convinced his daughter’s death is the result of a laboratory accident, has contacted lawyer Helena Flemming. When Helena’s partner, John Eisenmenger, a forensic pathologist, looks into the case, he not only uncovers Hartmann’s original autopsy and subsequent deception, but is launched into the perilous midst of an even greater lie.