Michael Palmer - The Fifth Vial

In Boston, a disgraced medical student is sent to deliver a research paper that could save her career… In a hospital four thousand miles away, a reclusive scientist, dying from an incurable disease that threatens to make each tortured breath his last, is on the verge of perfecting a serum that could save millions of lives—and bring others inestimable wealth… In Chicago, a disillusioned detective is hired to determine the identity of a John Doe, killed on a Florida highway, with mysterious marks on his body.

Three seemingly disconnected lives, surging unrelentingly toward one another—and linked forever by THE FIFTH VIAL.

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Medical student Natalie Reyes has fallen in disgrace with her supervisors and got suspended from school for 4 months. Her mentor and friend, a famous transplant specialist sends her to Rio/Brazil to speak at a transplant meeting. She never arrives there but is kidnapped, drugged and shot. Days later she awakes with her left lung lost in the shooting. Everything points to her needing a transplant soon.

At the time P. I. Ben Callahan is hired to investigate the identity of an unknown man who was run over by a truck but has visible marks of a recent bone marrow transplant. The Organ Guard Institution assumes him to be a victim of organ trafficking especially because they know about a similar case of a surviving woman who was kidnapped recently.

Valuable Dr. Joe Anson desperately needs a lung transplant. To not loose his valuable research he is tricked into agreeing to a transplant but later has to learn, that he was terribly tricked into an early transplant that has been waiting for him for a long, long time.

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The Fifth Vial is one of the best thrillers I've read this year. With an already satisfied appetite with the organ trafficking topic, this novel didn't hurt a bit. Quite the opposite, I couldn't put it down.
The book has three main characters with Natalie and Ben independently bringing the plot together from their perspective. They both, Ben more than Natalie act stupid at times, bringing their lives into even more danger but readers that are not bothered by some questionable turns in the storyline will enjoy this medical thriller from the first page to the last. They even might oversee the more or less last chapter (which is a bit cheesy) that concluded the relationship between Natalie and the person who received her lung.

Good read !

Rating:
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Mass Market Paperback: 544 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks (November 27, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312937741
ISBN-13: 978-0312937744