The macabre discovery of a truck full of dead Chinese in southern Texas brings together again the American pathologist Margaret Campbell with Li Yan, the Beijing detective with whom she once shared a turbulent personal and professional relationship. Forced back into an uneasy partnership, they set out to identify the Snakehead who is behind the 100-million-dollar trade in illegal Chinese immigrants which led to the tragedy in Texas — only to discover that the victims were also unwitting carriers of a deadly cargo. Li and Margaret have a biological time-bomb of unimaginable proportions on their hands, and an indiscriminate killer who threatens the future of humankind.

When a mass grave containing eighteen mutilated female corpses is discovered in Shanghai, detective Li Yan is sent from Beijing to establish if the bodies are linked to an unsolved murder in the capital. Here, Li will be working with Mei Ling, deputy head of Shanghai's serious crime squad. Mei Ling is a formidable woman: a fact that is not lost on Li's on-again, off-again lover, forensic pathologist Margaret Campbell. But when Campbell, vulnerable and still grieving the death of her father, learns that the victims were subjected to "live" autopsies, she swallows her pride and joins Li Yan and Mei Ling in the hunt for the murderer.As Li, Campbell, and Mei Ling enter the arena of a sickening nemesis they are forced to confront each of their very worst nightmares.

Enzo MacLeod, a Scot who is teaching forensics at Cahors in southwest France, thinks that he can use his expertise to crack seven notorious murders described in a book by Parisian journalist Roger Raffin. After solving the first two, Enzo is diagnosed with a terminal illness. And now it appears hes the target of someone intent on destroying his credit and getting him arrested for murder. Establishing a safe house for his loved ones, he sets to work. Are his woes connected to one of Raffins unsolved cases? What further remnants of evidence can he review? Can he stay alive until he catches the long-hidden killer? This is the third installment in the Enzo MacLeod series.

Margaret Campbell, a Chicago forensic pathologist, has been invited by the Chinese government to teach at the Beijing police university. She has accepted the six-week assignment with misgivings but is desperate to escape a troubled life in America. Arriving in Beijing, she checks “nothing to declare” on the health declaration they gave her on the plane — nothing, that is, “except a broken heart and a wasted life, neither of which was contagious.” She gets off to a bad start when her car knocks senior detective Li Yan off his bicycle. In a furious clash, he dresses her down in perfect English. But Li soon finds himself reintroduced to Margaret by his superiors when the newly promoted detective’s first case requires Margaret’s special expertise to identify a horribly burned corpse. Thrown together to track down the killer, Margaret and Li must bury their personal and cultural differences when they uncover a conspiracy that threatens not only their lives, but the lives of millions.