The Fifth Vial

November 20, 2006
Bestseller Palmer (The Society
) tackles the illegal transplant organ trade in his entertaining 12th medical suspense novel. What do three very different people—Harvard medical student Natalie Reyes, Chicago PI Ben Callahan and scientific genius Joe Anson—have in common? Natalie, in Brazil for a conference, is attacked, hospitalized and loses a lung; Ben gets hired to discover how a mutilated anonymous body died; Joe, the inventor of an untested medical breakthrough, is forced into an operation for his life-threatening pulmonary fibrosis. All three seek answers connected to the Whitestone Foundation, a conglomerate that's a front for the Guardians, a secret cabal of medical specialists. At a hidden hospital in the Brazilian rain forest, Natalie and Ben learn of the Guardians' insidious methods. Huge sums are at stake as the arrogant Guardians make medical decisions largely motivated by greed. The action, which begins plausibly, becomes less so as the tension builds. Still, Palmer, himself an M.D., does a good job of informing the reader on an important ethical issue. 225,000 printing; author tour.

October 15, 2006
Palmer is adept at tapping into people's natural fear of disease, doctors, and hospitals and converting that fear into unnerving suspense. In this, his twelfth medical thriller, Palmer plays with the phenomenon of organ donation, forcing the reader to ask nervously, "Where do donated organs come from?" The answer comes slowly, in the best medical-thriller tradition, by having three different characters, widely separated by space and circumstance, each play a role in tracking down a powerful conspiracy network. Natalie Reyes, a brilliant Harvard Medical School student, is summarily dismissed for disagreeing with a doctor. In one of the many wild stretches of the plot, Natalie goes to Rio de Janeiro to present a paper and is kidnapped and left for dead. In another stretch, a newly minted Chicago private eye is hired by a University of Chicago medical anthropologist to conduct an investigation into underworld organ trafficking. Meanwhile, in Yaounde, Cameroon, a doctor is refining a drug that can speed the formation of new blood vessels, but--slight problem--he's racing the clock against his own life-threatening illness. The sprawling plot lurches along toward the discovery of a conspiracy to obtain organs by any means and sell them at high prices. The characterization is wooden and the plotting clunky, but Palmer's fans know not to worry overmuch about such niceties. If medical thrills are what you're after, he delivers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)