SEVEN GRAMS

Nell Boudreaux is the medical examiner for Marchand Parish, Louisiana. The dead man on her table worked at the Sablon Chemical plant on the river road, and under the incision she makes there is a second set of stitches — older, neater, and in no record at any hospital in the state.

The trail runs out of the parish and into a ledger kept at Vantry Bight Capital, where Halloran Vantry's fund assigns terminal dates: the quarter a company is scheduled to fail, and the month a person is scheduled to stop. Rook Tarrant is drilling geothermal holes in Utah on Vantry money and bringing up core that should not exist. Simone Adjei is the analyst who read the second column and recognized the names in it.

Sixty chapters in four parts — The Wound, The Proof, The Withheld Cure, The Queue.