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A review by weaselweader
The Fifth Vial by Michael Palmer
5.0
A thrilling treatment of a very tired medical thriller plot subject!
When I read the dust flap for Michael Palmer's 12th medical suspense novel, The Fifth Vial and realized that it was about the illicit black market for transplant organs, I just about set it aside unread. Surely, Michael Palmer, himself an MD and an imaginative successful author of 11 previous medical thrillers could come up with a better plot idea than the hoary old chestnut of the black market trade in transplant organs! Well, the book was in my hands, my drink was already poured and the fire was lit ... I couldn't be bothered going back to my bookshelf for a second choice! And that, my friends, was a wonderful piece of serendipity!
Natalie Reyes, a medical student in Brazil for a conference, is attacked and hospitalized and loses a lung. Ben Callahan, a down on his luck, hard up private detective in Chicago, has been engaged by Organ Guard, anthropologist Alice Gustafson's watchdog agency, to investigate some apparent human rights violations and abuses in the procurement and transplantation of organs and tissues. Dr Joe Anson, a humanitarian, a doctor and brilliant researcher in Yaoundé, Cameroun, closes in on the completion of his research on Sarah-9, a drug that will save untold numbers of lives when it reaches world markets. But the race to complete that research may be lost to pulmonary fibrosis. Without a new lung, Anson's fate is all but sealed and the benefits of Sarah-9 will be lost to mankind.
OK, OK ... so Palmer's characters are a little bit overdone, a little bit stereotyped and cartoonish and little bit too heroic to be believable! But, the fact is, Palmer has also turned what could have been a potential rehash of old news into an exciting plot that moves at lightning speed with a techno-twist that will really raise your eyebrows. The ending, which ties up all the loose ends, is both brilliant and emotionally moving!
I was especially moved to see Michael Palmer's afterword in which he makes a personal plea to readers to become organ donors. For goodness' sake ... discuss the issue with your families, sign your organ donor cards, signify your intent on your drivers licenses, contact your local donor registries and make your death (which, much as we like to deny, is inevitable) all the more meaningful to the world surviving you. For what it's worth, this is also a personal sermon of sorts. I have asked my family, when I die, to give away every possible organ or piece of my body that will serve to make someone's life better and longer and to donate whatever is left to our local medical school for the purposes of teaching new doctors about anatomy. The best possible result of my death would having absolutely nothing left to bury or cremate!
Before all that has happened, you might take the time to read Michael Palmer's The Fifth Vial. You won't regret it!
Paul Weiss
When I read the dust flap for Michael Palmer's 12th medical suspense novel, The Fifth Vial and realized that it was about the illicit black market for transplant organs, I just about set it aside unread. Surely, Michael Palmer, himself an MD and an imaginative successful author of 11 previous medical thrillers could come up with a better plot idea than the hoary old chestnut of the black market trade in transplant organs! Well, the book was in my hands, my drink was already poured and the fire was lit ... I couldn't be bothered going back to my bookshelf for a second choice! And that, my friends, was a wonderful piece of serendipity!
Natalie Reyes, a medical student in Brazil for a conference, is attacked and hospitalized and loses a lung. Ben Callahan, a down on his luck, hard up private detective in Chicago, has been engaged by Organ Guard, anthropologist Alice Gustafson's watchdog agency, to investigate some apparent human rights violations and abuses in the procurement and transplantation of organs and tissues. Dr Joe Anson, a humanitarian, a doctor and brilliant researcher in Yaoundé, Cameroun, closes in on the completion of his research on Sarah-9, a drug that will save untold numbers of lives when it reaches world markets. But the race to complete that research may be lost to pulmonary fibrosis. Without a new lung, Anson's fate is all but sealed and the benefits of Sarah-9 will be lost to mankind.
OK, OK ... so Palmer's characters are a little bit overdone, a little bit stereotyped and cartoonish and little bit too heroic to be believable! But, the fact is, Palmer has also turned what could have been a potential rehash of old news into an exciting plot that moves at lightning speed with a techno-twist that will really raise your eyebrows. The ending, which ties up all the loose ends, is both brilliant and emotionally moving!
I was especially moved to see Michael Palmer's afterword in which he makes a personal plea to readers to become organ donors. For goodness' sake ... discuss the issue with your families, sign your organ donor cards, signify your intent on your drivers licenses, contact your local donor registries and make your death (which, much as we like to deny, is inevitable) all the more meaningful to the world surviving you. For what it's worth, this is also a personal sermon of sorts. I have asked my family, when I die, to give away every possible organ or piece of my body that will serve to make someone's life better and longer and to donate whatever is left to our local medical school for the purposes of teaching new doctors about anatomy. The best possible result of my death would having absolutely nothing left to bury or cremate!
Before all that has happened, you might take the time to read Michael Palmer's The Fifth Vial. You won't regret it!
Paul Weiss