THE SECOND OPINION by Michael Palmer
He’s baaaaaack! After a slight misstep with THE FIRST PATIENT, novelist Michael Palmer is back in top form with THE SECOND OPINION. This time out the book is fast-paced and full of interesting characters. Top of the list is Dr. Thea Sperelakis, a brilliant young woman who also happens to suffer from Asperger Syndrome. If you think that doesn’t add to the complexity of the story and give it a more human slant then you don’t know your Asperger Syndrome patients.
Thea has been practicing medicine with Doctors Without Borders in Africa when she gets word her father has been involved in an automobile accident. She rushes home to Boston where her father is in the hospital. He is being treated at the Beaumont Clinic, a medical facility where he practiced. Petros Sperelakis is now lying in a bed severely injured and semi-comatose.
When Thea reaches her father’s side her siblings, Nick and Serena, don’t offer her much hope of his recovery. Her other brother Dimitri has no opinion. He is a brilliant eccentric who stays out of family matters. Nick and Serena are convinced they should just pull the plug on their father but Thea demands more time.
Eventually her father rouses enough for Thea to make brief contact with him. During these moments she becomes convinced his accident was intentional. Now she has to find out who is trying to harm him and why. Doing so may place her in harm’s way as well.
Murders, attempted murders and other forms of mayhem populate this book. In thrillers the pacing is always paramount and the pacing in this one is just right. The tense situations in which Thea finds herself may require a little suspension of belief, but overall they are fairly logical and in a book of this kind that is enough.
The main elements are that Palmer is a good writer and he knows the medical jargon and techniques necessary for the basic credibility of the story. He also knows Asperger Syndrome due to the fact he has a son who has it. Taking that personal information and creating a character who shows you can function in the real world with Asperger Syndrome is a literary twist that pays off for the readers.
His last book, THE FIRST PATIENT, didn’t entertain and inform me as much as his books usually do, but with THE SECOND OPINION he is back on track. Hmmmm, “first” patient and now “second” opinion, are we in on the start of a number series of titles?
THE SECOND OPINION is published by St Martin’s Press. It contains 376 pages and sells for $25.95.