Critical Judgment

The impetus for this book, as with some others, came from the news–this time, two very disturbing events in California. In one, a gunman in San Diego opened fire inside a crowded McDonalds, killing many. Not long after, in northern California, a man with a semi-automatic weapon opened fire on a playground of children, killing a number of them. Inconceivable! I began to wonder how such events could happen, and I decided (obviously) that the gunmen were insane. Then my storyteller's imagination began to rumble. What if the two of them, plus some others, were together at the same place and moment when some sort of toxic exposure occurred, poisoning their brains, and rendering them homicidally disturbed, with none of them realizing what had happened. Critical Judgment started there and just kind of evolved. Abby Dolan, a junk-food addict must make a major decision. She loves her ER job in San Francisco, but her engineer fiancé has taken a position in the small mountain town of Patience, a hundred and fifty miles away. She decides her love is more important than her career, and accepts an ER position in Patience, not knowing that the man who awaits her is hardly the man who left the city to move there.

One of the characters who drives the story and about whom I received many letters, is Ives, a hermit and master archer (read Zen and the Art of Archery) who was not even a character in my original outline. I developed him simply because I needed a particular type of patient for Abby to care for in the ER. Almost before I knew it, he had taken over much of the book. That's when this writing business is really fun!

Of all my books, I see this one and The Patient as being the most cinematic. So far, no go, although The Patient was optioned for a while. Sometimes I look at what comes out of Hollywood and just shake my head. Sometimes I get rankled that an author is not considered to have truly arrived unless some cigar-chomping producer in Hollywood decides to film his book. What's that? Your second cousin once removed knows someone at Dreamworks? Well, now, let's talk!

—Michael Palmer

Excerpt from Critical Judgement book jacket:
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 manufacturing giant Colstar. Working in a small-town emergency room, knowing that her every move sparks gossip, Abby nonetheless begins to feel at home–until the first undiagnosable patients start showing up. Abby calls them NIWWs: No Idea What's Wrong. And despite her considerable skills, she can't crack these baffling, seemingly random cases. At the same time, Josh is experiencing blinding headaches and pain-driven episodes of manic, even violent, behavior. Abby wonders whether Colstar could somehow be poisoning the town. Her suspicions are shared by ER colleague Dr. Lew Alvarez, whose investigating committee has shrunk from several dozen members to a cautious three. When Abby finds herself playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse with Colstar's steely head of security, Lew warns her that her predecessor in the ER, a Colstar detractor, died in a dubious climbing accident. But Abby cannot back off. She loses a patient in the ER, the victim of a murderous rage in a normally easygoing man. Another patient nearly dies during a routine diagnostic test. And Abby starts to question everyone and everything in the now hostile town of Patience–while her most dangerous enemy is far closer than she thinks.

read more about Critical Judgement at:
RandomHouse.com/bantamdell

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