Customer Reviews

Critical Judgment

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The whole idea of chemical poisoning and a corporate cover-up is intriguing enough, but Palmer makes it even more exciting by adding twists and turns at all the right times. Every time I thought I figured out what was going on, I was pleasantly surprised to realize I was way off base. Abby's commitment to solving the mystery is fierce. The action is tremendous and it doesn't stop until the last page, as the story races to a thrilling conclusion. This book was difficult to put down. I highly recommend it for anyone looking for a chilling mystery novel.

the obvious anti-gun bias in the first few pages almost made me put it down. The author has a demented man walking into a gun store and coming out with 2 semi-automatic rifles. California has a 14 day waiting period for any gun purchase. No gun shop I know would sell to a disturbed person like Josh, they want to keep their license. The author also refers to these rifles as "machine guns". Palmer must have gone to the Diane Feinstein school of armory and misinformation. If he doesn't research guns very well, I am suspect of his other technical statements.

The "old man in the woods" who happens to be a Zen archery master is hilarious. Was Dr. Dolan supposed to be Grasshopper?

It is scary to think innocent people could be guinea pigs for government sponsored drug tests. Unfortunately that has happened several times we are aware of, soldiers exposed to radiation in Nevada and syphilis patients in Alabama. The central story of this novel could be true.

Cook wrote about ergot poisoning that caused uncontrolled violence. Clive Cussler wrote about water supplies being poisoned by chemical waste and that caused extreme violence as well. Palmer is a better writer than Cook but Cussler is more entertaining than either. Cussler also introduces topics for personal research.

I'll stick with Cussler.

I wanted a change from Robin Cook and I'm quite happy I found Michael Palmer. The book was a bit slow to start and I was tempted to stop reading it, but I kept on.
This book is fantastic. The characters are well written as is the plot. There were many times while reading this book that I felt troubled and anxious just because of what Abby was going through. This book really had a hold on me. Although it was the first Michael Palmer book I've read, I'll definately be reading more of his.

CRITICAL JUDGMENT is the first novel I've read by Michael Palmer. This book is a decent medical thriller. Palmer does a very decent job of building up suspense in the story, and I kept on turning the pages. There is also a good twist at the end of this novel that I didn't expect at all, and I'm usually pretty good at spotting such twists. Overall, I found the book entertaining enough to give it three stars.

My major problem with CRITICAL JUDGMENT was with the characterization, which I thought was rather bland. Abby Dolan, the heroine of this novel, seems too good to be true. She has almost no flaws, and is pretty much a superwoman. The romantic relationships in this novel seemed forced and unnatural.

I also found the conspiracy plot in this novel to be unbelievable. Why would so many respectable people conspire to do something so horrible to so many innocent townspeople? Palmer doesn't do a good job of explaining their motivations.

Palmer is also a rather verbose writer and I found myself skimming his rather excessive descriptions of all the different locations. This book is relatively long, and I think it could have been shortened by at least 50 pages without any major changes to the plot.

Still, Palmer is a good enough suspense writer that I plan to read more of his books. If you like this novel, I would suggest Tess Gerritsen's books, which have superior characterization and are more leanly written.

Dr Abby Dolan moved to Patience, California, to work at the Regional Hospital because her fianc? Josh found work at Colstar International in the same town. Colstar is the largest producer of portable power sources and they specialise in producing several types of batteries. Truly enough, Patience owes its wealth to this large company. After about five weeks in Patience, Abby notices that Josh is becoming irritable, distracted, easily fatigued and more and more frequently suffers from violent headaches which make him reach for the bottle, something he never used to do before. Furthermore, several patients treated by Abby seem to suffer from the same symptoms as Josh. After having had their blood analysed by an independent laboratory, it appears that these patients were all contaminated by cadmium. Colstar refuses to locate the source of the contamination because it would cost them too much to close the plant for any length of time. When Abby's investigations become too pressing, the director of Patience Regional Hospital, Joe Henderson, asks her to resign, menacing her with the falsified report on the death of one of her patients, Peggy Wheaton. But it is only when one night, returning home from work, Abby is shot at several times that she understands that the threat from Colstar is not to be taken lightly...
A very good medical thriller.

When I first started reading this book, I thought it was another 'big bad manufacturing plant putting the health and welfare of the community at risk'. But the plot soon broadened and the action sped up for a most enjoyable read. The premise is frightening and one I hope is unbelievable. But who knows?

Abby Dolan was a highly skilled female physician with plenty of upward mobility on the horizon at a major San Francisco teaching hospital. With no small amount of trepidation and introspection, she reluctantly changed jobs in order to be with her boyfriend, Josh, and accepted a position as head of the emergency room at Patience Regional Hospital, a much smaller hospital located in the mountains north of San Francisco that caters to the localized needs of the citizens of Patience.

It isn't long before Abby realizes that something simply isn't right. She's seeing an alarming number of NIWWs - her medical black humour shorthand for charting symptoms when she has "No Idea What's Wrong"! Like so many other small towns and cities North American, Patience is portrayed as an economic entity in which employment and survival depends on a single source. In this case, the driver is Colstar Industries, a battery manufacturer, that's part of the conglomerate empire belonging to multi-billionaire, Ezra Black. Colstar's survival, in turn, seems to depend in large part upon government contracts and the continued largesse of the incumbent senator.

As the plot began to unroll, circumstances begin to lead Abby into hypothesizing that Patience is being subjected to cadmium exposure by something or someone at Colstar and that the cause of her NIWWs is heavy metal toxicity. Uh oh ... I rolled my eyes and sighed, thinking I was wading into that aging medical thriller chestnut of the heroic sole practitioner waging battle against some evil megalomaniacal corporate demon. When Robin Cook first wrote "Coma" in 1977 almost single-handedly creating the medical thriller genre, this might have been new and exciting fare. But, since then, it's been beaten to death and I was convinced that "Critical Judgment" was bound to be a derivative dud.

How wrong could I have been? Even if the premise at its most basic isn't particularly new, Palmer's treatment of the story is exciting and fresh. "Critical Judgment" is a bona fide page-turning thriller with red herrings, lots of cliff-hangers, plenty of excitement and hold-your-breath moments plus an ending twist that nobody will see coming. Bravo, Michael Palmer!

His description of the professional politics and atmosphere of a small town regional hospital is interesting and informative with a clear ring of authenticity. In the context of a medical thriller, this makes for an innovative and most refreshing change from the usual setting of general hospitals in a major metropolis like Boston or Los Angeles. A regional hospital is clearly an entirely different environment with a multiplicity of challenges and opportunities that set it apart from its bigger city counterparts.

Last but not least, while we've seen other thrillers put a magnifying glass on surgery or obstetrics, for example, this is the first medical story I've seen that focused so completely on the emergency room. Even as the story was moving forward, Palmer treated his readers to a number of absolutely electric emergency room crises that put me into only one frame of mind - absolute awe at the skill and ice-cold decision making prowess of the medical staff that work in emergency room facilities across the continent.

Another great job, Michael Palmer! Highly recommended.

Paul Weiss

After reading this book, I decided I had to have all of Michael Palmers' books, so have ordered a few others I have not read. This, in my opinion, was one of his best and I have already read several others previously. I worked in an Emergency Room of a major hospital, so this book was of particular interest and it didn't let me down. I loved the surprise ending...I give it 5 thumbs up!

certainly learned a great deal about the medical profession

Once you pick up this book, you won't be able to put it down!!Michael has 'em hooked in "Critical Judgement". The plot is full of interesting characters, and action that takes no mercy!!If you want practically the best book available on the market, its gotta be "Critical Judgement".If you read this book, you won't regret it!!!!!