A review by ronilynnreads
Fatal by Michael Palmer

3.0

Overall, it was a good 'story'...trying to link what everyone thought were three random medical issues, despite the fact that these three cases were located in different parts of the country. It started out really interesting...how can a case of paranoid patients with neurofibromas (one in W. Virginia and the other in Boston) be linked to a pregnant woman in Chicago who thought she had the flu, but ended up with a fever and diarrhea that caused bleeding from every part of her body? What I like about Mr. Palmer is his ability to explain medical procedures and and healthcare policies with ease. what I don't like about him is his tendency to ramble on and on seemingly going nowhere with his explanations. This book (the paperback) was 509 pages! The story should have ended around page 321...it dragged on unnecessarily. It was a REAL struggle to finish it. I plowed through because I was ready to connect the dots. He seemed to add incidents just to make it a bit more convoluted to throw us off, but it only served to make things more boring. I don't know if I can recommend it unless you are truly fascinated by environmental issues (toxic dumps, coal mines) and vaccine-related illnesses and the supposed connection to autism and other similar diseases. The first Michael Palmer book I read was A Heartbeat Away and I really enjoyed it so I set out to read all of his books. Fatal was my second book and I think I need to take a quick break and read something more fast-paced before I dive back into the rest of his books.