Critical Judgement
an incredibly suspenseful and gripping medical thriller you won’t be able to forget…
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
Fans of Michael Connelly, Peter James and Robin Cook will love this tense and unputdownable medical page-turner from the pen of Sunday Times bestselling author Michael Palmer. Incredible medical knowledge coupled with a mesmerising turn of page - this is a phenomenal ride!
'Gripping and fresh... wrenchingly scary' -- Publishers Weekly
'Palmer brings his fascinating ER procedural knowledge to a fast-paced narrative.' -- San Francisco Chronicle
'Manages to scare the socks off the reader' -- Toronto Globe and Mail
'I seriously couldn't put it down. I highly recommend it' -- ***** Reader review
'Absolutely stupendous' -- ***** Reader review
'Totally complex novel that keeps your interest from beginning to end and then wishing it would not end' -- ***** Reader review
'Another Palmer book finished in less than 36 hours because I couldn't put it down' -- ***** Reader review
'This book hooks you in at the start and thrills right to the end' -- ***** Reader review
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ASKING QUESTIONS COULD END HER CAREER AND HER LIFE...
Dr Abby Dolan was on the fast track at a major San Francisco hospital when she made a critical choice: to follow her fiance, Josh Wyler, to the picturesque California town of Patience, where he has a new job with the manufacturing giant Colstar.
Working in a small-town emergency room, knowing her every move sparks gossip, Abby nonetheless begins to feel at home - until undiagnosable patients start to show up.
Despite her considerable skills, she can't crack these baffling, seemingly random cases.
When Josh too begins to suffer disturbing symptoms, followed by manic, even violent behaviour, she wonders: could Colstar somehow be poisoning the town?
Warned by a colleague that her predecessor in the ER died in a dubious accident after making similar allegations, Abby refuses to back off. She begins to question everyone and everything around her in the now hostile town of patience.
And her most dangerous enemy is far closer than she thinks.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A character in Palmer's latest medical chiller (after Silent Treatment) refers to the industrial enclave of Patience, Calif., locked among mountains above San Francisco, as "Faustville." It certainly seems as if the town has made a pact with the devil in order to thrive. Emergency room doctor Abby Dolan has been at Patience Regional Hospital for only a few months when she begins totting up "NIWWs"-her shorthand for patients whose complaints offer her "no idea what's wrong." The hospital and town are literally overshadowed by the manufacturing giant Colstar, a cliff-dwelling international battery-making concern whose security rivals that of the Pentagon. After Abby's fiance, Josh Wyler, a new Colstar employee, suddenly exhibits alarming manic symptoms and threatens her with violence, Abby begins to wonder if Colstar is exposing its employees to the toxic heavy metal cadmium, a battery component. It doesn't take her long to cross Colstar security chief Lyle Quinn, or to be approached for help by an earnest group known as the Alliance, headed by Abby's handsome ER colleague Lew Alvarez, who also suspects that Colstar's chemicals are harming the town. If the soulless but many-eyed corporation, secret underground labs and evil experiments on unwitting patients are familiar elements to medical suspense fans, Palmer, an M.D. who worked in emergency medicine, renders them, for the most part, gripping and fresh. Scenes of medical terror (particularly one involving a claustrophobic patient who suffers an allergic reaction inside an MRI cylinder) are wrenchingly scary, and the imaginative final twists confirm that Palmer is reaching the top of a demanding craft. Doubleday Book Club main selection; Literary Guild and Mystery Book Club alternates; simultaneous BBD audio; author tour.
