LITERATURE OF MEDICINE
Reviews and Notes: Humanities: Natural Causes
1 April 1995 | Volume 122 Issue 7 | Page 559
Michael Palmer. 386 pages. New York: Bantam Books; 1994. $21.95.
This is the fourth medical suspense book by Dr. Palmer, who is an internist and emergency department physician. Although female physician-protagonists have become the rage in novels of this type, this one is a bit unusual: an obstetrics and gynecology resident and an acupuncturist who dispenses herbal medicines (made using a recipe she learned when she was living in northern Thailand) to her prenatal patients. Why do several of her patients develop disseminated intravascular coagulopathy? If you like medical suspense stories, you may like this one. Most of the characters are predictably evil or nice, but the medicine is plausible, and the drug names are spelled correctly. A good example of the genre and a relaxing read.
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