Name: The Last Surgeon
ISBN: 9780312587499

Michael Palmer

Working in a mobile clinic while struggling with the challenges of PTSD, veteran doctor Nick Garrity searches for a missing war buddy and finds himself pitted against a terrifying psychopath who is disguising some of his kills as suicides. By the author of The Second Opinion. 250,000 first printing.

The Last Surgeon

Sarah Sammis

In The Last Surgeon by Michael Palmer, Nick "Fury" Garrity, veteran suffering from post traumatic stress disorder spends his days and nights helping people from a mobile clinic on the streets of Washington D.C. He is contacted by a nurse who wants to prove her sister was murdered even though the evidence points towards her death being a suicide. Together they go against a brilliant but evil foe, a man who has perfected the art of the "no-kill", making his murders appear like accidents and self-inflicted deaths.

That's the gist of the book. The reviews I've read call The Last Surgeon an interesting page turner. While it had its moments, I'm finding myself getting tired of brilliant psychopathic serial killers. They seem to be a dime a dozen these days. Granted, I've never been a huge fan of serial killer novels (I laughed while reading Silence of the Lambs), sometimes I'm in the mood for one. The medical thriller angle for The Last Surgeon lured me into a book I'd otherwise not pick. I should have gone with my initial gut reaction and skipped the offer to review it.

The book for me suffers from two main problems: too many points of view and too much time spent with the serial killer. The idea is to make him seem threatening to build the sense of suspense but all his crazy thinking lessens the believability of his informed attribute (namely we're told he's brilliant) and distracts from the mystery at hand (can Dr. Garrity find medical evidence that links these deaths and proves that they are murders?).

The book for me would have been tighter and more of a page turner if it had only focused on Nick Garrity's scenes. The other scenes don't play as convincingly and pulled me out of the medical thriller moment.