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The Fifth Vial
The Fifth Vial
Oct 9, 2024 5:20 AM

Author:Michael Palmer

The Fifth Vial

Tough, ambitious and hardworking, Natalie Reyes finds herself suspended - unjustly - from Harvard Medical School, and it feels like her world has ended. But when her mentor sends her to present a medical paper at a conference in Rio de Janiero, it almost does... Kidnapped, and shot while trying to escape, Natalie is left for dead in an alley. Against all the odds she survives, but her dreams are shattered.

On the other side of the world, medical genius Joe Anson is working on a serum which could save millions of lives - if only he can fend off a fatal illness long enough to complete his research. But Anson is running out of time, and those watching from the shadows will stop at nothing to ensure he fails.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, disillusioned private detective Ben Callahan is struggling to identify a dead man; struggling to find an explanation for the mysterious marks on his body. But the answer could lead Ben into a conspiracy far wider than this case...

Three people with no apparent connection learn the meaning of trust and betrayal as they are drawn into the web of secrecy which surrounds the fifth vial...

Reviews

An ingenious medical thriller, suspenseful and cleverly plotted

—— Kathy Reichs

A tale set at the very edge of our medical knowledge, and of a thrilling heroine who confronts a theft that haunts me still. I loved it!

—— Tess Gerritsen

From real to surreal...This quirky story of avarice and vengeance in rural France unfolds with all the charm of a slightly puzzling art house french movie

—— Carla McKay , Daily Mail

Crime fiction for those with a soul and a dark sense of humour

—— Independent on Sunday

Magnan chronicles the hidden passions seething below the apparently idyllic surface of rural life [in a style] closer to Flaubert than Midsomer Murders

—— Daily Telegraph

Magnan is a master storyteller... unmissable

—— Country Magazine

This is a book full of surprising discoveries and reversals, but also a fascinating portrait of a society closer to fracture than anyone is prepared to admit...One of the novel's strength's is that it values intelligence, and the process of analytic thought as much as it does the sensational moments

—— Roz Kaveney , Independent

Pearl's is an ambitious project; literary criticism, biography, reconstruction, reportage and fiction, all in one volume...Where else could you find all this and disquisitions on the slave trade, voter fraud in local elections and the workings of the US postal system? And the truth about Edgar Allan Poe's death?

—— Nicola Smyth , Independent on Sunday

Fascinating reading

—— The Times

This is a story not for people who like reading novels but for the much larger number who like solving puzzles

—— Sunday Telegraph

Bruen's tightly coiled prose strikes like a piss-soaked rattler.

—— Capital

Sharp, punch and unsettling, Priest is a masterpiece.

—— Peterborough Evening Telegraph

... An intensely dark maelstrom ... excellent.

—— www.marymartin.com.au

Bruen should be valued as one of the most challenging and memorable writers in the genre at the moment.

—— www.reviewingtheevidence.com
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