Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Feb 2008
384 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
Gabe Singleton and Andrew Stoddard were roommates at the Naval Academy in Annapolis years ago. Nowadays, Gabe is a country doctor and his friend Andrew has gone from war hero to governor to President of the United States. One quiet, rural day, helicopters land on Gabe's front lawn and from one of them strides his old friend. The president's physician has suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, and he needs Gabe to take the man's place. Gabe reluctantly agrees, but not until he is ensconced in the White House does he realize there is strong evidence the president is going insane. Facing a crisis of conscience surrounding presidential illness and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, Gabe discovers that his friend's condition may not be of natural causes. Who? Why? And how? The president's life is at stake. The safety of the nation is in jeopardy. Gabe must find the answers, and the clock is ticking.
"Palmer's latest medical thriller (after The Fifth Vial) adds presidential politics and nanotechnology to his usual mix and comes up with a story that may not always be believable but keeps the reader turning pages anyway." - Library Journal.
"Starred Review. Palmer convinces readers that his novel is logical and reasonable, even as he mixes the unlikely with the insanely hyperbolic." - Publishers Weekly.
This information about The First Patient was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
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 was then an associate director of the Massachusetts Medical Society's physician health program. He died in November 2013
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