Palmer, Michael 1942-

views updated

Palmer, Michael 1942-

PERSONAL:

Born 1942, in Springfield, MA; married first wife; wife's name Judy (a college administrator; divorced, 1971), married second wife; wife's name Noelle (a special-needs teacher), 1989; children: (first marriage) Matthew, Daniel; (second marriage) Luke. Education: Wesleyan University, B.A.; Case Western Reserve University, M.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Swampscott, MA. E-mail—mpalmer@shore.net.

CAREER:

Falmouth Hospital, MA, emergency room physician, 1980-91; Massachusetts Medical Society, Boston, MA, associate director of physician health program. Maintained a private practice in internal medicine on Cape Cod.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

The Sisterhood, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 1982.

Side Effects, Gregg Press (Boston, MA), 1985.

Extreme Measures, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 1991.

Natural Causes, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 1994.

Silent Treatment, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 1995.

Critical Judgment, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 1996.

Miracle Cure, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 1998.

The Patient, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 2000.

Fatal, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 2002.

The Society, Bantam Books (New York, NY), 2004.

The Fifth Vial, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2007.

ADAPTATIONS:

Extreme Measures was adapted as a film in 1996.

SIDELIGHTS:

Though Michael Palmer loved working as an emergency room physician, the job came with considerable stress and by age thirty-six he had been fired for abuse of prescription drugs. Tempted to commit suicide, he instead sought therapy and began a new career as a writer. His medical thrillers have become best sellers and have been translated into thirty-five languages.

Palmer's fiction debut, The Sisterhood, concerns a secret society of nurses who are really mercy killers. First published in 1982, the book was in its thirty-fifth printing by 2007. In Side Effects, a Boston pathologist discovers a sinister medical conspiracy when she tries to find out why healthy women are inexplicably dying. Palmer uses the subject of conspiracy again in Extreme Measures, in which an emergency room doctor discovers a plot to use healthy homeless people as human guinea pigs for a new drug.

Miracle Cure, according to Library Journal reviewer Michael Adams, offers an interesting look at the forces that can push a promising but unproven drug onto the market. Palmer's choice to make the novel a "pulp melodrama," Adams went on, weakens the story's credibility but also makes it "exhilarating." "I'm a commercial storyteller," Palmer explained to People interviewer Kim Hubbard. "I don't want turns of phrase or stuff inside the books that will pull people out of the story."

An ethical dilemma that Palmer himself faced in the emergency room—whom to treat first when one of several needy patients is a violent criminal—challenges neurologist Jessie Copeland in The Patient. A terrorist with a brain tumor has heard about new technology that Dr. Copeland is using for this condition, and he shows up demanding the operation—taking staff and patients hostage to ensure her cooperation. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly admired Palmer's ability to "put readers firmly inside the skin" of the neurosurgeon.

In The Fifth Vial, described by Entertainment Weekly writer Paul Katz as a "terrifying vision of the Hippocratic oath gone very wrong," Palmer explores illegal organ harvesting. Finding the story implausible, a reviewer for Publishers Weekly nevertheless enjoyed the book's narrative tension and its examination of an "important ethical issue."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Entertainment Weekly, February 16, 2007, Paul Katz, review of The Fifth Vial.

Library Journal, February 15, 1999, Michael Adams, review of Miracle Cure, p. 200.

New York Times Book Review, April 23, 1995, Newgate CAllendar, review of Silent Treatment.

People, July 8, 1996, Kim Hubbard, "The Write Prescription," p. 53.

Publishers Weekly, November 28, 1994, review of Natural Causes, p. 59; January 16, 1995, review of Silent Treatment, p. 435; March 13, 1995, review of Extreme Measures, p. 67; January 8, 1996, review of Silent Treatment, p. 66; February 9, 1998, review of Miracle Cure, p. 74; February 21, 2000, review of The Patient, p. 64; November 20, 2006, review of The Fifth Vial, p. 33.

Tribune Books, March 20, 1994, review of Natural Causes, p. 7.