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    The Fifth Vial by Michael Palmer

The Fifth Vial: Book summary and reviews of The Fifth Vial by Michael Palmer

The Fifth Vial

The Fifth Vial
by Michael Palmer
Published in USA Feb 2007,
384 pages.

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Readers' Rating:  Not Yet Rated
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The Fifth Vial Summary

In Boston, a disgraced medical student is sent to deliver a research paper that could save her career. . . . Four thousand miles away, in a jungle hospital in Cameroon, a brilliant, reclusive scientist, dying from an incurable disease that threatens to make each tortured breath his last, is on the verge of perfecting a serum that could save millions of lives, and bring others inestimable wealth. . . . In Chicago, a disillusioned private detective, on the way to his third career, is hired to determine the identify of a John Doe, killed on a Florida highway, with mysterious marks on his body. Three seemingly disconnected lives, surging unrelentingly toward one another. Three lives becoming irrevocably intertwined.

The Fifth Vial Reviews

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." - PW.
"The characterization is wooden and the plotting clunky, but Palmer's fans know not to worry overmuch about such niceties." - Booklist.

The information about The Fifth Vial shown above was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's online-magazine that keeps our members abreast of notable and high-profile books publishing in the coming weeks. In most cases, the reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author of this book and feel that the reviews shown do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, please send us a message with the mainstream media reviews that you would like to see added.

The Fifth Vial Reader Reviews

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Michael Palmer Author Biography

Michael Palmer, M.D., is the author of A Heartbeat Away, The Last Surgeon, The Second Opinion, The First Patient, The Fifth Vial, The Society, Fatal, The Patient, Miracle Cure, Critical Judgment, Silent Treatment, Natural Causes, Extreme Measures, Flashback, Side Effects, and The Sisterhood. His books have been translated into thirty-five languages. He trained in internal medicine at Boston City and Massachusetts General Hospitals, spent twenty years as a full-time practitioner of internal and emergency medicine, and is now an associate director of the Massachusetts Medical Society's physician health program.

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