One-line review

The core premise, once revealed, seems contrived and I found some elements of the story distracting, but The Last Surgeon still managed to hook me for a day’s reading.

What drew me to the book

I’ve been reading medical thrillers for a long, long time. Michael Palmer is one of the three that I started out reading (the others were Michael Crichton and Robin Cook) and the only one that I continued to read into the ’90s. He is still on my auto-read list of writers, along with Tess Gerritsen, Diana Gabaldon, and Karen Marie Moning (er, most of those writers write in different genres than Michael Palmer so don’t take that as a list of if-you-like-these-authors-you’ll-like-this-one).

My thoughts on the book

There are some books that I pick up and then have to read all the way through, putting off all other things that I had planned for my day. I expect certain authors to deliver that kind of book, so I wasn’t surprised that an entire day of to-dos didn’t get done when I picked up The Last Surgeon.

If you read the prologue to The Last Surgeon you can see how I got sucked into the book. It did keep me turning the pages despite a few distracting elements that will probably keep me from re-reading this one.

As I was reading this book, I had a vague sense of deja vu because the medical victims reminded me somewhat of the victims in Extreme Measures (both books’ victims are drawn from the homeless population and are experimented upon). I found the similarity a bit distracting because I kept comparing the two books.

The protagonist has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from a tour in Afghanistan, which is timely, but I often got the feeling I was being deliberately “educated.” Palmer is fund raising for PTSD as part of his book launch so it may be that the intent was to educate the public through the book (laudable), but it felt a bit forced in the novel.

There were aspects of this book that I enjoyed, like the killer making all the murders appear to be accidents rather than murders (as you can read in the excerpt), and others that left me feeling a bit ‘meh.’ As I closed the book I was left thinking, why didn’t they just do B instead of A and avoid all this in the first place?

The Last Surgeon was a good read, but isn’t a book I’ll re-read like some of his other books. Flashback is still my favourite for that.

You can still enter to win a copy of this book until tomorrow. [This giveaway is now closed.]

About the book author

Michael Palmer can be found at his online home where you can read the prologue to The Last Surgeon. He is the author of fourteen other medical thrillers:

Find this book online

The Last Surgeon: Amazon US * Amazon Canada * Amazon UK

[This giveaway is now closed.]

So I was hanging out on Twitter when I saw an author asking bloggers if they wanted to read his new book. That happens quite a bit. But this time it was Michael Palmer. As in New York Times bestselling author Michael Palmer. As in one of the triad of authors who got me interested in science and medicine Michael Palmer (the others were Robin Cook and Michael Crichton).

Except he wasn’t asking me.

So I very politely and demurely said “ME PLEASE! GIMME PLEASE!” Or words to that effect (sometimes it’s hard to remember what I said out loud as opposed to what I was thinking).

A week or so later I got The Last Surgeon in the mail along with a note offering an autographed copy of the The Last Surgeon to Booklorn readers. Which brings me to today’s post: Giveaway!

Not only is Michael Palmer autographing the book, but he’s happy to ship it to a winner ANYWHERE in the world.

In case you’re unfamiliar with his books, Michael Palmer writes medical thrillers. I’ve read my copy and it’s a good read (in keeping with his other books). I haven’t had time to write up my review, but I hope to do that by next week so you’ll see it before the giveaway closes.

I’ve been reading Michael Palmer since I was a teen (or maybe even a tween — like most book-loving kids I was reading grown up books ahead of my peers). I’ve probably read every book that he’s written AND he’s the only one of the triad that I continued to read beyond the ’90s. If you like medical thrillers, you’ll want to enter this giveaway.

Here are the details:

• Random draw.
• Open worldwide.
• Fill out the form below to enter.
• Give me an e-mail address that you check because that’s how I’ll contact you if you win.
• Giveaway closes on February 15th at 1 am MST.