Paul Konig is Chief Medical Examiner, New York City. Each day's grisly workload of strangled whores, battered babies and dismemebered corpses is just routine to him. Contemptuous of the police, the public and his fellow-doctors, he presides over the morgue like a monarch. But things can go wrong, even for Konig. . . Not only has his daughter been kidnapped, he's up against a dead-end in the most gruesome multiple murder case of his career. And he's running out of time. . .