Before he does anything else, amateur sleuth and college professor Thomas Martindale must get out of jail and clear his name. In the process, he has to find the real killer of a close friend and stop the fiendish plans of her former husband, a biologist trying to use human subjects in deadly virus research. His search leads him to an abandoned and spooky sanitarium in Oregon's Coast Range where he finds a murderous Mexican drug gang, an inquisitive old lady who keeps butting into his investigation, and a missing moose amid the bats, rats, cobwebs, and the horrors of past treatment schemes for the mentally ill and those with debilitating illnesses.
