Michael Palmer has become one of my favourite authors to watch out for. He writes fascinating and terrifying medical crime thrillers drawn from his career experiences as a practitioner of internal and emergency medicine and it is no wonder that reviewers have proclaimed him a master of medical suspense. His books are all the more compelling to read because some of his dynamic story outlines are actually taken from true accounts of his readers.
In this stand alone book, he has taken two separate issues of 1) the effects of toxic dumps and 2) a new and potentially dangerous mass vaccine, and integrate them into a wholly gripping and non-stop read. I must admit I was not able to get into the book in the beginning but I was not about to give up on a favourite author so, after the first couple of chapters, I found myself totally hooked and ended up spending most of my free time devouring it!
To extrapolate on the second point above, here is an excerpt taken from the book which hits the nail right on the head: "...What I can say is that as vaccination rates have climbed, there has been an alarming increase in the incidence of a number of so-called immune-mediated diseases and conditions such as asthma, allergies, juvenile diabetes, autism, ADD and other learning disabilities, whose classification as immune-mediated diseases remains to be established. Is there a connection? Do vaccinations in some instances disrupt the normal development of the body's immune system? Until long-term, double blind studies are performed on vaccines, we may never know."
Michael Palmer once said in an interview and which I now quote: "...we may be at the base of a dangerous pandemic. This is probably not the time to be doing the controlled research vaccines should undergo. We can only ask that all precautions be taken while a serious research design is developed..."
It gives one food for thought.
Palmer started off with three seemingly unassociated characters and storylines:
When Dr Matthew Rutledge's wife, Ginny, died from a rare form of cancer, he was convinced that it was the result of the local mining company dumping illegal toxins into the ground water. He felt that the mining company might have contributed to his father's death too. He then became suspicious when a recurrence of patients with unexplained paranoia and elephant-like symptoms began turning up at the hospital where he worked. What does he do? Set out to find irrefutable proof with the help of the Slocumb brothers, four endearing mountain-twang hermits without knowing there was more at stake.
At around the same time, a retired school teacher and a tireless consumer campaigner from Maryland, Ellen Croft, abstained from voting against the new Omnivax megavaccine which she suspected could be fatal in the long term, rather than risked her granddaughter's life to an unknown killer.
Massachusetts coroner, Nikki Solari, came to Belinda in West Virginia to attend a close friend's funeral who had died of the same debilitating disease that Dr Rutledge saw in his treatment room. On her way home, she was hijacked by two unsuspecting assailants which subsequently brought her under the radar of the doctor.
The author's all-rights-reserved website is at http://www.michaelpalmerbooks.com/ It is worth a visit. I am now on a journey to read all of Michael Palmer's books. I guarantee it will make you put on your thinking cap. Highly recommended.
Rating: 5/5 (Unputdownable)
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