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The Patient: Summary and book reviews of The Patient by Michael Palmer, plus links to an excerpt from The Patient and a biography of Michael Palmer.

The Patient

The Patient
by Michael Palmer
Hardcover: Mar 2000,
304 pages.
Paperback: Jul 2001,
304 pages.

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BOOK SUMMARY

With one nerve-shattering New York Times bestseller after another, Michael Palmer has demonstrated his extraordinary ability to create medical thrillers that are at once relentlessly suspenseful and chillingly realistic. And now the former ER physician returns with the stunning and explosive tale of a gifted neurosurgeon drawn into a world of escalating danger and violence, all because of...The Patient.

Dr. Jessie Copeland is exactly where she wants to be: A respected neurosurgeon at Eastern Mass Medical Center, she spends her days waging life-and-death battles in the OR and her spare time holed up in a lab, spearheading the development of a tiny robot that could revolutionize brain surgery.

ARTIE--Assisted Robotic Tissue Incision and Extraction--is an exciting fusion of biomechanics and radiology that, when perfected, will be able to excise tumors now considered inoperable. But it could be months before ARTIE is ready for use on human beings...or so Jessie thinks, until her ambitious department head jumps the gun and uses the robot in a high-profile case that nets immediate worldwide attention.

Suddenly the hospital is swarming with media, vying for a multimillion-dollar grant, and fielding calls from patients desperate for this lifesaving technology. But what no one at the medical center realizes is that the publicity has also reached one of the most malevolent men on earth.

Claude Malloche is brilliant, secretive, remorseless, and without regard for human life--a mercenary willing to bring down a world leader or a jetliner filled with people if the price is right. He is also ill with a life-threatening brain tumor that is exactly the sort ARTIE was invented to treat. Now Malloche must come into the open, and he has set his sights on the hospital that has burst to the forefront of neurosurgery: Eastern Mass Medical Center.

For those caught on the neurosurgical floor, the nightmare has just begun...and no one is more aware of the stakes than Jessie Copeland. In brain surgery there are no guarantees. But that's exactly what Claude Malloche demands, leaving Jessie to face the most harrowing case of her life. Disaster is just a cut away. And the price of failure may be thousands of lives....

Heart-poundingly scary and immensely entertaining, The Patient is riveting, unpredictable, page-turning suspense. It is terror to which no one is immune.

Media Reviews

  The Denver Post
The Patient might be [Michael Palmer's] most riveting book yet, leaving hardly enough time to take a breath. After all, it is brain surgery.

  Publishers Weekly
This graft between medical and terrorist thriller has some rough edges, but the operation is a success.

  Publishers Weekly
This graft between medical and terrorist thriller has some rough edges, but the operation is a success.

Recent Reader Reviews

Rated 5 of 5 of 5 by dean
keeps you interested
the fact of the matter is that I've had this book for a while...i never actually read it until recently and i regret not having done so earlier...if you're into science and medicine then this story will keep you very interested...even if you aren't...   Read More

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