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On sale everywhere books are sold February 16, 2010.

The New York Times bestselling author and master of medical suspense delivers another shocker of a thriller filled with insider details and a terrifying psychopath.

Four murders.
Three accidents.
Two suicides.
One left…

THE LAST SURGEON

Michael Palmer’s latest novel pits a flawed doctor against a ruthless psychopath, who has made murder his art form. Dr. Nick Garrity, a vet suffering from PTSD—post traumatic stress disorder—spends his days and nights dispensing medical treatment from a mobile clinic to the homeless and disenfranchised in D.C. and Baltimore. In addition, he is constantly on the lookout for his war buddy Umberto Vasquez, who was plucked from the streets by the military four years ago for a secret mission and has not been seen since.

Psych nurse Jillian Coates wants to find her sister’s killer. She does not believe that Belle Coates, an ICU nurse, took her own life, even though every bit of evidence indicates that she did—every bit save one. Belle has left Jillian a subtle clue that connects her with Nick Garrity.

Together, Nick and Jillian determine that one-by-one, each of those in the operating room for a fatally botched case is dying. Their discoveries pit them against genius Franz Koller–the highly-paid master of the “non-kill”—the art of murder that does not look like murder. As Doctor and nurse move closer to finding the terrifying secret behind these killings, Koller has been given a new directive: his mission will not be complete until Jillian Coates and Garrity, the last surgeon, are dead.

Background Information

As you may know, each of my books has been built around a medical ethical issue such as euthanasia, alternative healing, managed care, ecological contamination, and organ distribution. Two years ago, I met a Marine veteran with PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) on a brief flight from Boston to D.C. Although we did not stay in touch, I was very moved by our conversation, and not long after returning home I began thinking about weaving a story around this sad, frightening condition.

The result is the terrifying tale of Army trauma surgeon Captain Nick Garrity, working on a mobile medical van caring for vets and the homeless in D.C. while he tries to conquer the fallout from the suicide bomber who killed everyone in Nick’s field hospital in Afghanistan except Nick and his best friend, Umberto. When Umberto, whose PTSD is even more virulent than Nick’s, disappears, Nick is brought into the crosshairs of brilliant psychopath Franz Koller, the remorseless master of the non kill murder that does not look like murder.

THE LAST SURGEON is as exciting and fun to read as it was to write, and we are introducing it with an energetic social media campaign. I am writing you in the hope that you will become a part of it. In addition to your review of the novel, my son, Daniel Palmer, and Berklee School of Music professor, Thaddeus Hogarth, have produced the first ever (to my knowledge) theme song created for a novel, along with a new promotional video.

“Question Everything.”

Dr. Thea Sperelakis, diagnosed as a teen with Asperger’s syndrome, has always been an outsider. She has a brilliant medical mind, and a remarkable recall of details, but her difficulty in dealing with hidden agendas and interpersonal conflicts have led her to leave the complex, money-driven dynamics of the hospital, and to embrace working with the poor, embattled patients of Doctors Without Borders. Her father, Petros, is one of the most celebrated internal medicine specialists in the world, and the founder of the cutting-edge Sperelakis Center for Diagnostic Medicine at Boston’s sprawling, powerful Beaumont Clinic.

Thea’s rewarding life in Africa is turned upside-down when Petros is severely injured by a hit-and-run driver. He is in the Beaumont ICU, in a deep coma. No one thinks he will survive. Thea must return home. Two of Petros’ other children, both physicians, battle Thea and her eccentric brother, Dimitri, by demanding that treatment for their father be withheld.

As Thea uncovers the facts surrounding the disaster, it seems more and more to be no accident. Petros, himself, is the only witness. Who would want him dead? The answers are trapped in his brain . . . until he looks at Thea and begins slowly to blink a terrifying message.

In The Second Opinion, Michael Palmer has created a cat-and-mouse game where one woman must confront a conspiracy of doctors to uncover an evil practice that touches every single person who ever has a medical test. With sympathetic characters and twists and betrayals that come from the most unlikely places, The Second Opinion will make you question…everything.

What if when you had your blood drawn for routine tests, the laboratory draws an extra tube without you being aware? That tube is then sent off to be tissue-typed and the results put in a massive database. If your tissue make-up turns out to be a perfect match for someone with power or money and the need of a transplant of any kind, you had best stay indoors for a good while!

THE FIFTH VIAL

Natalie Reyes has a chip on her shoulder. She’s had a tough life and worked hard to get herself, against all odds, to Harvard Medical School. But her efforts are thwarted when she is suspended from school. With time before her reinstatement, her mentor sends her to Rio de Janeiro Brazil to present a medical paper. There, Natalie is kidnapped, shot trying to escape, and left for dead in an alley. She survives, but loses a lung. And now, all her dreams are shattered.

Halfway around the world, medical genius Joe Anson is working on a serum that could save millions of lives…if only he can battle a fatal illness long enough to complete his research. Brilliant and paranoid, Anson is running out of time. And those watching from the shadows will stop at nothing to see him succeed.

In Chicago, detective Ben Callahan is hired to find the identity of a dead man with mysterious marks on his body. One lucky break could lead Ben into a conspiracy bigger than just a missing person and a mysterious accident.

Three people, with no apparent connection. Three people who don’t realize they hold the key to a secret society with God-like aspirations and roots in antiquity. Three people who will learn the meaning of trust and betrayal, power and genius, lies and truth, in a world where everything is give or take.

See what these New York Times bestsellers are saying about The Fifth Vial:

“An ingenious medical thriller, suspenseful and cleverly plotted.” –Kathy Reichs, author of Cross Bones

“A nail-biting thriller you don’t want to miss.” –Catherine Coulter, author of Point Blank

“A complex plot, fascinating characters, and plenty of action. The Fifth Vial is a roller coaster ride that winds its way through Boston, Africa, India, and Brazil on its way to a terrific surprise ending.” –Phillip Margolin, author of Proof Positive

“From knowledge comes power, and from power, temptation. Michael Palmer’s The Fifth Vial is a tale set at the very edge of our medical knowledge, and of a thrilling heroine who confronts a theft that haunts me still.” –Tess Gerritsen, author of Vanish

“A compelling and thought-provoking tale that will have you looking over your shoulder. It’s both realistic and terrifying and it will keep you up all night!” –Iris Johansen, author of On the Run

“There’s a compelling truth at the center of this high-octane thriller. The twists keep you reading and the questions Palmer poses keep you thinking all night long.” –Tami Hoag, author of Prior Bad Acts

“Not only is this one heck of a medical thriller, it’s…a premise that scared the daylights out of me. Could this happen? Palmer makes you think so.” –Sandra Brown, author of Ricochet

“Michael Palmer, perhaps the best of our medical thriller writers, has penned an action-packed tale that will have you checking all your body parts for days afterwards.” –Terry Brooks, author of Armageddon’s Children

With every one of his ten novels a New York Times bestseller, emergency medicine physician Michael Palmer is recognized by critics and fans worldwide as a master of medical suspense. Now Palmer delivers a relentless thriller that slices to our deepest fears with surgical precision—a tale as timely as it is terrifying, as harrowing as it is plausible. Welcome to The Society.

At the headquarters of Boston’s Eastern Quality Health, the wealthy and powerful CEO is brutally murdered. She’s not the first to die—nor the last. A vicious serial killer is on the loose and the victims have one thing in common: they are all high-profile executives in the managed care industry. Dr. Will Grant is an overworked and highly dedicated surgeon. He has experienced firsthand the outrages of a system that cares more about the bottom line than about the life-and-death issues of patients. As a member of the Hippocrates Society, Will seeks to reclaim the profession of medicine from the hundreds of companies profiting wildly by controlling the decisions that affect the delivery of care. But the doctor’s determination has attracted a dangerous zealot who will stop at nothing to make Will his ally. Soon Will is both a suspect and a victim, a pawn in a deadly endgame. Then, in one horrible moment, Will’s professional and personal worlds are destroyed and his very life placed in peril.

Rookie detective Patty Moriarity is in danger of being removed from her first big case—the managed care killings. To save her career, she has no choice but to risk trusting Will, knowing he may well be the killer she is hunting. Together they have little to go on except the knowledge that the assassin is vengeful, cunning, ruthless—and may not be working alone. That—and a cryptic message that grows longer with each murder: a message Grant and Moriarity must decipher if they don’t want to be the next victims.

Author Notes

The desire to write a thriller dealing with managed care actually sprang from my medical job (see www.physicianhealth.org). My clients are Massachusetts physicians who have encountered difficulty with physical illness, mental illness, substance abuse, anger management, and other behavioral problems. While the overwhelming paperwork and practice restrictions of managed care did not cause their problems, they certainly added to them. There is so much unhappiness, exhaustion, and disillusionment in the medical profession right now that I really felt I had to write about it. Many doctors are working twice the hours they once did just to keep their incomes from plummeting. This at a time when $100,000 or more in medical school loan debt is the norm.

As an ER doc, I only had to deal with issues of record keeping (if I didn’t write down “rectal negative,” as far as the insurance companies were concerned, I didn’t do one), and not finances (I was salaried by the hour). In private practices, the paperwork demands are gargantuan and much work goes unpaid for. Currently, many physicians are fighting back, organizing to design and advocate for some sort of national health insurance that will cover everyone (tens of millions are currently uncovered) and relieve doctors of the crushing burden of paperwork. Enter the Hippocrates Society.

The Society took me two years to create and write, but I am very pleased with the result. It is one thing to choose an issue to write about such as euthanasia, infertility, pharmaceutical company excesses, academic fraud, holistic healing, and the like. It’s another to deal with those issues in the context of a novel of suspense. I think you’ll have a great time reading The Society, and hopefully get a feeling for how your caregivers and their patients have been affected by managed care.

In his most high-concept thriller yet: 12-time New York Times bestselling author Michael Palmer delivers a novel at the crossroads of presidential politics and cutting-edge medicine.

Gabe Singleton and Andrew Stoddard were roommates at the Naval Academy in Annapolis years ago. Nowadays, Gabe is a country doctor and his friend Andrew has gone from war hero to governor to President of the United States. One quiet, rural day, helicopters land on Gabe’s front lawn and out from one of them strides his old friend. The president’s physician has suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, and he needs Gabe to take the man’s place. Gabe reluctantly agrees, but not until he is ensconced in the White House does he realize that strong evidence has been kept from him that the president is going insane. Facing a crisis of conscience surrounding presidential illness and the Twenty-fifth Amendment, Gabe discovers that his friend’s condition may not be of natural causes. Who? Why? And How? The president’s life is at stake. The safety of the world is in jeopardy. Gabe must find the answers, and the clock is ticking.

THE FIRST PATIENT: Background Notes

I’ve tried, with each of my books, to give readers some insight as to how the book came to be. Certainly, with The First Patient, the route was an unusual one. I am not the sort of writer whose brain is just bursting at the seams with plot ideas. For me it’s been a struggle almost every time. As The Fifth Vial was winding down, and I was casting about for book next, my seventeen-year-old son, Luke suggested that I write about nanotechnology, which all of the kids in his class were talking about that day. I confessed I knew next to nothing of nanotechnology, but I also confessed I knew next to nothing of what my next book was going to be about. For weeks after, I researched the subject, and loved what I learned. Finally, I took the plunge and wrote a brief outline about the potential for intelligence of so-called nanobots. Proudly, I shared my proposal with son Daniel, a songwriter and fine, imaginative novelist.

There followed a protracted, pregnant silence. Then, “…um, Dad, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I just read that book. And to make matters worse, it was written by Michael Crichton.”

Glurp!!

I read the book, Prey, and it was darn close to what I was thinking about.

Stuck again.

Enter my brilliant editor, Jennifer Enderlin at St. Martin’s Press, who called me not knowing that I was in an idea crisis. She had had a dream—a dream that I wrote a thriller about the President’s doctor called The First Patient! Now, THAT’S an editor!! I tried arguing that I knew nothing of Washington or presidential medicine or presidential politics. But once again, I started reading – book after book on presidential morbidity, mortality, and the Twenty-fifth Amendment, which has to do with getting a president out of office when he (she) doesn’t want to go. Then, with my new awareness of the field, I turned to the Internet, and almost immediately hit gold in the form of Dr. Connie Mariano who, for more than ten years, was arguably the most powerful doctor in the world – the personal White House physician to H.W. Bush, the Clintons, and for a short while, George W. She was working in a new career and after asking around and reviewing my web site, agreed to be my advisor for this book. And so she was.

I decided to write about the president’s friend and physician, coming to believe that the president was going insane. But why? How? It was going to be a very short book if he just went crazy.

Think….think….think, and suddenly there the answer was, right in front of my nose – er, I mean right in my bookshelf. Nanotechnology!! The circle was complete, and all I had to do was add the words and maintain my contact with Dr. Mariano.

From The Sisterhood, Michael Palmer’s first New York Times bestseller, to The Patient, his ninth, reviewers have proclaimed him a master of medical suspense. Recognized around the world for original, topical, nail-biting suspense, emergency physician Palmer’swork has been translated into more than thirty-five languages. Now he reaches controversial and startling new heights in a terrifying tale of cutting-edge microbiology, unbridled greed, and murder, where either knowing too little or trusting too much can be FATAL.

In Chicago, a pregnant cafeteria worker suffering nothing more malevolent than flulike symptoms begins hemorrhaging from every part of her body. In Boston, a brilliant musician, her face disfigured by an unknown disease, rapidly descends into a lethal paranoia. In Belinda, West Virginia, a miner suddenly goes berserk, causing a cave-in that kills two of his co-workers. Finding the link between these events could prove FATAL.

Five years ago, internist and emergency specialist Matt Rutledge returned to his West Virginia home to marry his high-school sweetheart and open a practice. He also had a score to settle. His father died while working for the Belinda Coal and Coke Company, and Matt swore to expose the mine’s health and safety violations. 

When his beloved Ginny succumbed to an unusual cancer, his campaign became even more bitterly personal. Now Matt has identified two bizarre cases of what he has dubbed the Belinda Syndrome–caused, he is certain, by the mine’s careless disposal of toxic chemicals. All he needs is proof.

Meanwhile, two women, unknown to one another, are drawn inexorably to Belinda, into Matt’s life–and into mortal danger. Massachusetts coroner Nikki Solari comes to attend the funeral of her roommate, killed violently on a Boston street. Ellen Kroft, a retired schoolteacher from Maryland, seeks the remorseless killer who has threatened to destroy her and her family.Three strangers–Rutledge, Solari, and Kroft–each hold one piece of a puzzle they must solve, and solve quickly. If they don’t, it will be far more than just their own lives that are at risk.

Michael Palmer has crafted a novel of breathtaking speed and medical intricacy where nothing is as it seems and one false step could be FATAL.

Author Notes

Fatal will, I hope, become the most controversial of my books. Five years ago, I began to think that I might want to write a thriller dealing with vaccinations. My interest in the field was the result of our efforts to diagnose and treat the developmental delay of our son, Luke.

As a physician and parent, my interest in vaccinations did not go beyond the perfunctory. If the pharmaceutical industry or the FDA or my family pediatrician said “vaccinate” I vaccinated, whether it was my patients or my children. No questions asked. In 1990 my son Luke was born. He received the standard vaccinations despite the fact that he was felt to have “allergies” including one to milk. At 8-months of age he began having ear infections–almost continuously until 19-months of age, when I insisted he have tubes put in. The procedure stopped the need for antibiotics, but I believe the damage to his nervous system was already done.

By the time Luke was 3 years old, he was diagnosed as having a form of autism. Years later, the diagnosis was honed down to “Asperger’s Syndrome,” also known as “right brain autism”, a condition on the spectrum between severe low-functioning autism and mild ADD. In making the rounds of various treatment centers, I became acquainted with many, many parents and their developmentally delayed children. The similarities from case to case were often striking, with chronic ear infections frequently preceding the onset of symptoms. More and more, the issue of vaccinations came up. Could our children’s immunizations have somehow compromised their immune systems, making them prone to ear infections and the subsequent dangers of excess antibiotics? Other parents believed that vaccinations directly caused their children’s autism.

I began reading and researching and found that while there are few answers in the area of vaccine-caused disease, there are many unanswered questions. Over the years, I became determined to write a thriller that raised these issues, just as others of my books have dealt with euthanasia (The Sisterhood), corporate medicine (Flashback), infertility (Side Effects), managed care (Silent Treatment), alternative medicine (Natural Causes) and academic research cheating (Miracle Cure). Over countless hours of research for Fatal, I examined the literature and spoke to parents, vaccine advocates, proponents of vaccine caution, and my academic friends. It was my hope as always in my writing, to craft a riveting story that raised questions rather than answered them. In the case of Fatal, the plea is made for a renewed look at vaccinations, extended clinical research, tighter controls on the studies necessary before a vaccine is released, and a review of those vaccinations which should be made mandatory. I am grateful to many for their teachings, but especially Barbara Loe Fisher and Kathi Williams of the National Vaccine Information Center, Gratefully, through hard work and concerned professionals, Luke is overcoming the obstacles of his condition and is thriving. I hope someday soon, we learn what is behind his diagnosis, and that of so many others. As with The Patient, there is an author’s note at the end ofFatal which will help direct those interested in learning more about environmental medicine or vaccines.