Customer Reviews

The Last Surgeon

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

In "Last Surgeon," Michael Palmer tells the story of Nick Garrity, a trauma surgeon suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, otherwise known as PTSD. Following the horrific events of 9/11, Garrity volunteers to serve in Afghanistan, only to nearly lose his life in the process--when a trusted local running a medical clinic orchestrates an explosion that takes the life of many Americans, including Garrity's fiancée Sarah.

The only ones to survive this tragedy are Nick Garrity and staff sergeant Umberto Vasquez, who miraculously saves Nick's life. Fast forward years later and life is never the same. Garrity quits his private practice, teams up with a cheerful nurse called Junie, and starts running a mobile charity clinic called Helping Hands, giving medical treatments to the poor and the homeless in the Baltimore and Washington D.C. areas, while trying to help other vets suffering from PTSD gain benefits.

His peaceful life is disrupted with the arrival of nurse Jillian Coates, whose sister Belle, also a practicing nurse, dies in suspicious circumstances. Her death is made to look like suicide--a simple overdose of sleeping pills, but Jillian believes otherwise. She sees a suspicious stack of comic books hidden in Belle's apartment, all focused on the character Nick Fury. Jillian locates Dr. Nick Garrity, when she finds out that Nick Fury was his military nickname and suspects Belle's death is somehow related to him.

Meanwhile, Nick is growing concerned with the disappearance of Umberto Vasquez, who, after returning from Afghanistan, turns into an alcoholic and mysteriously disappears after agreeing to take on a special military mission. Nick learns of a man called Manny Ferris, who also disappeared after agreeing to participate in a similar mission--only to re-appear, looking horribly disfigured and mentally brainwashed--unable to provide Nick with any useful information about Umberto or the mission itself.

While this is taking place, Franz Koller, a hired killer who works a substitute teacher in his spare time, continues to kill various doctors who work in the same hospital as Belle. Master of the non-kill, as well as of disguises, he makes his grizzly murders look like natural deaths, while receiving handsome payments from his employer who boasts ties all the way to the White House.

Trying to connect the dots between all of the above events, Nick and Jillian begin running out of time and ultimately turn into Koller's targets.

Overall, I really enjoyed the plot. This is my first Palmer book, so I wasn't sure what to expect. For starters, this book is as much a mystery as a thriller. Readers are not merely led into various action sequences, but are left to piece everything together for a shocking final revelation. I also enjoyed the characters, especially Franz Koller, who is an impressive villain.

The writing itself, while full of medical terminology--not surprising given Palmer's expertise in the area--adds a lot of realism to the story. Given the dishonesty of politics, I was left wondering if something like this could actually happen in real life. Recommended for not only mystery-lovers, but any reader looking for an entertaining read.

"The Last Surgeon" by Michael Palmer is one fast-paced, action-packed thriller that had me not wanting to put the book down. Dr. Nick Garrity has been searching for a long lost war buddy when he meets Gillian Coates, whose sister Belle seemingly committed suicide, but Gillian thinks otherwise. A comic book clue "Nick Fury", led Gillian to Nick and together they find clues of a much bigger conspiracy. Soon they are on the hit-list and must not only find out who is behind it all, but keep themselves and others around them alive. Mr. Palmer has written a novel that kept me up into the middle of the night because it was that entertaining.

There was not much "medical" in this purported medical thriller novel by Michael Palmer. I've read his entire backlist, and indeed some of his novels are better than others, but this one was very much not one of his better ones. This book was about conspiracy and secret operations and veterans and only marginally even about PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). The characters in the book seemed flat and stereotypical -- the vet, a doctor, had a fiance who was brutally murdered by a terrorist and thus he suffers the survivor guilt and also the PTSD from the event. The typical beautiful psychiatric nurse, Jillian, who falls for him was such a cliche (far too perfect and the romance was so contrived as to be nauseating). Both of them mostly just annoyed me. I didn't need so much focus on the romance in this book and was looking for far more medicine and a lot more thriller. It just falls short in every respect.

The ex trauma surgeon, Dr. Nick Garrity, actually only works for one or maybe two nights during the whole of the novel in an RV that he and a nurse have developed into a charitable business delivering care to the poor of Baltimore and DC, and to veterans in particular -- Helping Hands Mobile Medical Unit. That is the sum total of the "medical" part in this book. After the second chapter, the story line focuses on his search for his Marine buddy, the guy who saved him from the terrorist, Umberto Vasquez. Apparently the staff sergeant disappeared about 4 years previously, supposedly called back to some secret special operation and has not been heard from since.

The nurse, Jillian Coates, works on the psychiatric unit in a hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina (I think she works maybe twice during the whole book too), when her sister is murdered in what appears to be a staged suicide. Of course she's suspicious. Starts her own investigation. Hooks up with Dr. Nick and then they both start investigating and of course the two events are connected in a vast conspiracy that ends up being pretty much exactly what the reader expects -- and basically sort of boring.

In short, this is one of Palmer's books that you can safely skip if you're looking for a medical thriller with lots of clinical details. It's basically not that at all -- more of a mystery that happens to involve a doctor and a nurse and an unscrupulous plastic surgery clinic and the CIA and well, you get the picture.

Readers -- tell me -- are there ANY good medical thrillers being written any more? If you find one, please let me know!

As I read the last few words and closed this book, my heart was racing and my pulse was pounding. I just had to sit there for a moment and reflect on the many issues that were presented in this fascinating tale. Not only does Michael Palmer write well-plotted stories, he builds them around real medical issues, health problems, or controversial ethical questions. In THE LAST SURGEON, the reader learns about the disorder known as PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, and how it specifically affects the lives of those returning from war.

Not only do many regard PTSD as a phony malady, many veterans have difficulty getting their benefits because of the misunderstood diagnosis. Dr. Nick Garrity is under the curse of this often debilitating disease. He has spent years in therapy and has finally gotten healthy enough to volunteer his medical skills with Helping Hands, a mobile medical RV that serves the homeless and indigent. Yet he struggles every day with his ever-present memories. When he meets Jillian Coates and they begin working together, his hope for recovery is encouraged and we have to admire his character and determination.

In contrast to the admirable Dr. Garrity is Franz Koller, who is probably the most diabolical mass murderer ever. He works for a person/group known only as "Jericho," and his assignments take him all over the country to set up "non-kills" --- murders that are cleverly made to look like accidents or suicides. He finds his work irresistible and has lost track of how many murders he has committed. The pattern of his kills has never been discovered --- until now. And, as Nick and Jillan begin to uncover clues, they come closer and closer to becoming his next victims.

Palmer surrounds his protagonists with memorable characters --- some as likable as Nick and Jillian, others as despicable as Franz Koller. Among the former would be Nick's friends, Junie and Sam Wright. Junie is a nurse who keeps the Helping Hands outreach afloat and, with Sam, has fostered many needy children over the years. Among the latter would be Phillip MacCandliss, a Veteran's Administration bureaucrat who delights in denying benefits to veterans suffering from PTSD.

THE LAST SURGEON is brilliantly written and will keep you guessing until the author is good and ready to reveal the surprising conclusions. Michael Palmer has been writing bestsellers since 1994, and if you have never read one, THE LAST SURGEON would be a good place to start. The action that kicks off on page one never stops until the heart-pounding conclusion is reached.

Former battlefield trauma surgeon Dr. Nick Garrity suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder following a suicide attack on his field hospital in Afghanistan. Back home in Baltimore, Nick runs the Helping Hands RV mobile clinic that provides medical care to the homeless while struggling to contain his PTSD symptoms.

At the same time Nick drives the streets of the city, someone kills Central Charlotte Medical Center Cardiac Surgery ICU nurse Belle Coates in Charlotte, North Carolina. Belle's sister Jillian leaves her home in Virginia to uncover the identity of the person who killed her sibling. She soon finds a tie to Nick and his homeless clients; several of whom have abruptly vanished from the streets as if swept away; neither realizes who is spying on them.

The Last Surgeon is a fast-paced enthralling conspiracy medical thriller that grips the audience with a need to know why the homeless are vanishing and the professional hit man killed Belle. Nick is a fascinating protagonist who suffers from PTSD while Jill is a kick butt heroine. Fans will enjoy Michael Palmer's latest action-packed tale as the CIA secretly operates.

Harriet Klausner

I read The Second Opinion and the Fifth Vial and thought that they were passable. I like them less after having read this miserable piece of garbage.

The Last Surgeon is just plain dreadful, with cardboard characters, including a pathological killer who has a tedious running internal monologue congratulating himself on his expertise, a tragic hero, Dr. Nick "Fury" Garrity who is traumatized and oh-so-sensitive, and also quite the Mr. Perfect, and a love interest, Jillian, who is, of course, stunningly beautiful and Ms. Perfect; a caring nurse who is devoted to her dead sister that of course she raised when their parents died.

The plot just sort of lies around and drools, involving a search for an old buddy who went missing (Mr. Perfect) and the true killer of the sister (Ms. Perfect). Nothing too compelling there, no surprises really, no clever twists. Same old conspiracy and brainwashing stuff that you got sick of back when Mission Impossible was still on the air. The search is punctuated by occasional, repetitive fight scenes where the good guy gets slammed into something, usually a wall. The dialogue is no better than a string of pre-teen Facebook status updates. Plus, this book is crawling with adverbs, so many that I wanted to scream, a little like this: He slowly, gently paddled out on the evenly calm water, saying calmly and kindly to himself, "Nicely done."

It didn't help that narrator John Bedford Lloyd read it like a drunken kindergarten teacher's assistant.

I review only audiobooks, and I welcome your comments.

This book was bad. Very bad. Ignoring for a moment the ridiculously and unbelievably 'perfect' lead character and his stereotypical friends, the plot itself was beyond silly.

The story takes place in and around the Baltimore/Washington DC area, and follows Dr. Nick Garrity as he attempts to find a long-lost friend with whom he served in Afghanistan. He eventually meets up with his also ridiculously perfect counterpart, Jillian Coates, who is trying to solve a mystery herself. The unnecessarily convoluted plot took awhile to unravel, as it usually does in thrillers, but unfortunately it was so sub-par that I found myself skipping entire pages.

Another problematic aspect of the book was the dialogue, which was horrible. I was having difficulty imagining out who would actually say the things out loud that these characters spewed out with terrifying regularity. And for being such a 'great guy', Nick Garrity also exhibited several outrageous lapses in judgment with regard to a foster child with whom he was close, as did other characters in the book.

Overall, the characters were probably the worst of all the poor features of the book. The plot was a close second. It would have been a one-star book for me, but I'll give a little leeway for some interesting factoids placed throughout the book, as well as the fact that I have actually read worse.

I really hated to hate this book. I've read every Michael Palmer book over the years, especially saving each new novel for vacation time, but The Last Surgeon was just too horrific to read at any time or any place. I kept picking it up and putting it down. Please Mr. Palmer...you don't have to be so graphic...we all have great murder mystery imaginations!

I like a good story and that's what I got in the past with Michael Palmer. This one smells! I don't know if he got lazy but... His characters are usually a bit wooden and his romantic bits are hard to swallow but usually the plot sucks me in. I got to a point near the end and I ended up throwing it against the wall.

Characters in the plot discover that 8 people have died - obviously murdered but disguised to look like a natural death. The main character leaves and comes back to find two of the people, that have been working on finding the murderer, are dead. He wonders why the one slit the other's throat and then shot himself in the head. Palmer has created a hero that is `tea-bagger stupid`. That is when I gave up.

This book was disgustingly violent and tedious. I had to put it down after 200 pages. The story goes nowhere. I liked Mr. Palmer's earlier work. He is resting on past laurels.