The Fifth Vial - Michael Palmer - Review

Well, my wife E told me I should read this book. She's a reasonably intelligent woman, and I'm scared to not do what she says, so I read it.

The book takes 3 seemingly disparate individuals, each with their own story, and (eventually) weaves them into a single tale. The primary theme is the illegal organ trade, and how power, money and ego ultimately corrupts people and organizations that probably started with good intentions.

My initial reaction was 'meh'. It wasn't a total waste of time, and was mildly entertaining. Some of the very descriptive stuff made me cringe a bit, not because it was overly gruesome, but because it was told from a kind of detached viewpoint. Probably has something to do with Palmer being a doctor, sticking a scalpel into someone isn't all that uncommon for them.

He seems to spend an inordinate amount of time making sure we understand that it is wrong to kill one person so that you can put their parts into a different person. The morality angle seemed overly obvious, and at first the whole thing seemed a bit implausible to me.

However, I have to admit that the more I think about it the more I could see something like this actually happening. I've dealt with some doctors that are arrogant enough to subscribe to some of the twisted logic that the 'Guardians' spew in the story. And human history is littered with lunatics that would fervently subscribe to their reasoning, that's certainly scary enough.

I'll tell you one thing, I'm sure I'll remember the book the next time a doctor orders me to go get a blood test...

    Description from Amazon:

The Fifth Vial - Michael Palmer

Description from Amazon:
Bestseller Palmer (The Society) tackles the illegal transplant organ trade in his entertaining 12th medical suspense novel. What do three very different people—Harvard medical student Natalie Reyes, Chicago PI Ben Callahan and scientific genius Joe Anson—have in common?...