The Fifth Vial » (Unabridged)

MICHAEL PALMER is the author of fourteen previous novels of medical suspense, all international bestsellers. In addition to his writing, Palmer is an associate director of the Massachusetts Medical Society Physician Health Services, devoted to helping physicians troubled by mental illness, physical illness, behavioral issues, and chemical dependency. He lives in eastern Massachusetts.

From blockbuster author Michael Palmer comes a novel of medical suspense that raises chilling questions: Who ends up with the blood samples you routinely give? What else are they being used for? Why don't you know?

In Boston, a disgraced medical student is sent to deliver a research paper that could save her career… In a hospital four thousand miles away, a 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 detective is hired to determine the identity of a John Doe, killed on a Florida highway, with mysterious marks on his body.

Three seemingly disconnected lives, surging unrelentingly toward one another—

and linked forever by THE FIFTH VIAL

"A terrifying vision of the Hippocratic oath gone very wrong."—Entertainment Weekly

"Palmer taps a real medical issue for storytelling thrills."—Boston Magazine

"A tale set at the very edge of our medical knowledge. I loved it!"—Tess Gerritsen

Publishers Weekly

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. (Feb.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.