Silent Treatment [Abridged, Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Michael Palmer (Author), Adam Arkin (Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1995

In his five national bestsellers, Michael Palmer has drawn listeners into a frighteningly realistic world where the line between medicine and murder is scalpel-thin. Now, in a no-holds-barred tale of medical intrigue, Palmer introduces the most terrifying physician since Hannibal Lechter, and delivers a listening experience that will keep your pulse racing from beginning to end.

Silent Treatment

Michael Palmer

Dr. Harry Corbett heads to the hospital to visit his wife, Evie, scheduled for surgery the next day, and finds, much to his shock, that Evie is dead. The police suspect homicide. Their only suspect is Harry.

Harry is unprepared for the stunning revelations that follow: his bright, beautiful, highly ambitious wife was leading a double life. But what secret was explosive enough for her to die for?

When the killer strikes again, tauntingly murdering one of Harry's favorite patients, Harry is certain of one thing: the killer, moving undetected through a busy urban hospital, could only be another doctor.

Desperately, Harry probes deeper, following the only clue Evie left, and finds a sinister pattern that threatens hospital patients throughout the city. Dr. Harry Corbett is engaged in a life-and-death battle of wits with a chillingly efficient monster. And until this monster is unmasked, no patient is safe from his lethal silent treatment.

Michael Palmer has done it again, delivering a gripping thriller and revealing how the power to heal can become a license to kill.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A timely topic (health care) and a scary idea (a health care insurance cartel killing clients for "cost containment") give Palmer's new medical thriller (after Natural Causes) a big boost-but poor writing, including a series of unlikely plot twists, ultimately sinks it. Dr. Harry Corbett, two weeks short of 50, is trying to save his marriage to beautiful, ambitious journalist Evie, 11 years his junior, who's facing surgery for an aneurysm in Harry's hospital. When Evie dies in hospital, and her lover, about whom Harry knew nothing, accuses Harry of killing her, a boorish NYPD detective vows to nail the distraught doctor. Further murders follow, committed by one Anton Percheck, a physician who used to torture for drug dealers and repressive governments and now works for the cartel. Meanwhile, Harry is beaten, abducted, drugged, chased by villains and the law and nearly killed more than once. As in his earlier novels, Palmer's medical expertise (he's a practicing physician), as well as his ability to write a suspenseful scene, rival those of Robin Cook; unfortunately, so do his pedestrian prose, shallow characterizations, reliance on forced coincidences and maddeningly dim hero (grilled by the vicious cop, Harry doesn't call his lawyer because "he had done nothing wrong"). Major ad/promo; audio rights to BDD.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Just before his 50th birthday, life begins to unravel for Dr. Harry Corbett of the Manhattan Medical Center. Not only is his beautiful and talented wife, Evie, scheduled for serious neurosurgery but Harry believes that he will die on his birthday like his father and grandfather. Nothing happens as the doctor fears. Instead, his wife is murdered, and, after confessing to an affair with her, Harry's archenemy, Casper Sidonis, accuses Harry of having killed her. The most dimwitted cop in recent fiction arrives on the scene and agrees with Sidonis. From this somewhat far-fetched beginning, Palmer (Natural Causes, LJ 2/1/94) creates a suspenseful, entirely credible tale of health insurance fraud and behind-the-scenes hospital politics. Palmer, who manages to find new and more frightenting themes for his medical thrillers, gets better with each book.
--Jo Ann Vicarel, Cleveland Heights-University Heights P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Random House Audio; abridged edition edition (March 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 055347345X
• ISBN-13: 978-0553473452
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,705,476 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michael Palmer, is the author of sixteen novels of medical and political suspense, all international bestsellers. His 17th medical and political thriller, OATH OF OFFICE is now available. In addition to writing, Palmer is an associate director of the Massachusetts Medical Society Physician Health Services, devoted to helping physicians troubled by mental illness, physical illness, behavioral issues, and chemical dependency. He lives in eastern Massachusetts.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A thrilling masterpiece, April 23, 2000

By 

Olivier Grand (Paris, France) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Silent Treatment (Mass Market Paperback)

I have just finished reading Michael Palmer's Silent Treatment and there's all but one word to say: Wow! A well-knit plot, engaging characters, action, suspense, all these ingredients make this novel a captivating book. It was hard to put down and a real pleasure to read night after night.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not exactly a page-turner, August 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Silent Treatment (Mass Market Paperback)

This is the first of Michael Palmer's books that I have read. It was interesting enough to keep me reading. I finished it in no time flat, but it was not captivating. It lacked real excitement and ended too abruptly. I never connected with Harry, and at times I wished Dickenson would just arrest him and get it over with. As a graduate student in Health Administration I was excited but disgusted by the whole managed care sub-plot. Wow. That took a creative imagination.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Perhaps it's not the worst he's written, but it's the worst I've read!, December 13, 2009

By 

Paul Weiss (Dundas, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Silent Treatment (Mass Market Paperback)

When you've written as many novels as Michael Palmer has, it's a logical inevitability that something is the best and something else has to qualify as the weakest! It's a sad day to encounter that candidate for a career worst when you've come to believe that an author's quality is almost inevitably top flight!

When Evie Corbett, a young up-and-comer in the community, dies suddenly and unexpectedly on the eve of a surgery, homicide is suspected and the only suspect within view is her husband, Dr Harry Corbett.

At this point, I'm going to digress a little and take the liberty of quoting myself from my recent review of another Michael Palmer novel, "Critical Judgment":

"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."

Well, I went on to admit that "Critical Judgment" successfully beat back that initial negative impression and succeeded in spades.

But, "Silent Treatment" is another story. This time around, my eyes rolled back and just kept right on going. The plot (which IS of the derivative sole practitioner versus corporate megalomaniacal demon variety) and the criminals (a secret cabal of top level insurance executives seeking to eliminate high cost patients sucking profit off their bottom lines) are all fully revealed within the first few chapters by Palmer himself. The characters are wooden and any suspense that the plot may have generated was eliminated by its early revelation and complete lack of credibility. The major villain of the piece is a completely over-the-top, laughable, cartoonish parody ... a caricatured Dr Mengele, most recently an expert in non-invasive medical torture by the Colombian drug cartel. Now the insurance cartel have hired him as a nomadic serial killer, meandering from hospital to hospital, HMO to HMO, killing off expensive patients that the insurance companies have, with most grievous hindsight, realized they should never have given coverage.

And, before any zealous commenters yell at me, this is NOT a spoiler. Palmer managed that all by himself!

"Silent Treatment" was published in 1995. It was neither Palmer's first effort nor his most recent so I choose to treat it as an aberration as opposed to any indication that he's jumped the shark or lost his edge. I'll continue to read all of Palmer's novels as a solid fan but I can't recommend that any reader, fan or otherwise, bother with this particular novel.

Paul Weiss