In his five bestselling novels, from The Sisterhood to Natural Causes , physician Michael Palmer has drawn on years of firsthand emergency-room experience to create the drama of a frighteningly authentic world--a world where the line between medicine and murder is scalpel-thin. Now, in his most harrowing suspense novel yet, Palmer reveals how the power to heal can become a license to kill....
With his wife, Evie, scheduled for surgery the next day, Dr. Harry Corbett goes to the hospital for what he hopes will be a quiet evening of reconciliation. In recent weeks Evie, never quick to share her feelings, has been more closed and distant than ever.
But when Harry reaches Evie's room, it is too late for reconciliation. Shockingly, without warning, Evie is dead. The police suspect homicide. And their only suspect is Dr. Harry Corbett.
Harry is not prepared for the stunning revelations that follow: His bright, beautiful, highly ambitious wife was leading a double life; she may have had
dangerous secrets. But what secret could have been explosive enough to die for?
Then the killer strikes again, boldly, tauntingly murdering one of Harry's favorite patients in such a way that only Harry knows the death was not natural. This time Harry is certain: The killer, medically sophisticated, coolly arrogant, moving undetected through a busy urban hospital, could only be a doctor. And he wonders--how many more will die?
Desperately Harry probes deeper, following the only clue Evie left. What he finds is a sinister pattern that threatens patients in every hospital in the city. Harry is engaged in a life-and-death battle of wits with a chillingly efficient monster. And until the doctor is unmasked, no patient is safe from his lethal silent treatment.
Michael Palmer has done it again, delivering a no-holds-barred novel of medical intrigue-- a gripping thriller that features the most terrifying physician
since Hannibal Lecter. Silent Treatment will keep your pulse racing from beginning to end
From the Paperback edition.
From Publishers Weekly
A timely topic (health care) and a scary idea (a health care insurance cartel killing clients for "cost containment") give Palmer's new medical thriller (after Natural Causes) a big boost-but poor writing, including a series of unlikely plot twists, ultimately sinks it. Dr. Harry Corbett, two weeks short of 50, is trying to save his marriage to beautiful, ambitious journalist Evie, 11 years his junior, who's facing surgery for an aneurysm in Harry's hospital. When Evie dies in hospital, and her lover, about whom Harry knew nothing, accuses Harry of killing her, a boorish NYPD detective vows to nail the distraught doctor. Further murders follow, committed by one Anton Percheck, a physician who used to torture for drug dealers and repressive governments and now works for the cartel. Meanwhile, Harry is beaten, abducted, drugged, chased by villains and the law and nearly killed more than once. As in his earlier novels, Palmer's medical expertise (he's a practicing physician), as well as his ability to write a suspenseful scene, rival those of Robin Cook; unfortunately, so do his pedestrian prose, shallow characterizations, reliance on forced coincidences and maddeningly dim hero (grilled by the vicious cop, Harry doesn't call his lawyer because "he had done nothing wrong"). Major ad/promo; audio rights to BDD.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Just before his 50th birthday, life begins to unravel for Dr. Harry Corbett of the Manhattan Medical Center. Not only is his beautiful and talented wife, Evie, scheduled for serious neurosurgery but Harry believes that he will die on his birthday like his father and grandfather. Nothing happens as the doctor fears. Instead, his wife is murdered, and, after confessing to an affair with her, Harry's archenemy, Casper Sidonis, accuses Harry of having killed her. The most dimwitted cop in recent fiction arrives on the scene and agrees with Sidonis. From this somewhat far-fetched beginning, Palmer (Natural Causes, LJ 2/1/94) creates a suspenseful, entirely credible tale of health insurance fraud and behind-the-scenes hospital politics. Palmer, who manages to find new and more frightenting themes for his medical thrillers, gets better with each book.
--Jo Ann Vicarel, Cleveland Heights-University Heights P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.