Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Feb 2007
384 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
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 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.
This information about The Fifth Vial 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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