Mercy

Starred review from March 14, 2016
Boston doctor Julie Devereux, a divorced mother and the heroine of this outstanding second posthumous collaboration (after 2015’s Trauma) between Daniel Palmer and his father, Michael (1942–2013), is on the verge of marrying the love of her life, Sam Talbot. But everything changes when Sam is left a quadriplegic after a motorcycle accident. Sam’s requests that Julie let him die place her in an especially difficult spot, as she has been a passionate advocate of death with dignity. Tragically, just as Sam begins to be receptive to a support group for the paralyzed, he dies from a heart attack. Baffled by this turn of events, Julie turns sleuth, only to find that something disturbing is going on at her hospital, something the reader has known since the prologue, which depicts an unnamed doctor administering a fatal dose of medication to a patient he considers to have “no business living.” Ample, plausible twists combined with well-developed characters add up to a superior thriller that grapples with the ethics of euthanasia. Agent: Meg Ruley, Jane Rotrosen Agency.

May 1, 2016
Daniel Palmer has followed in the footsteps of his late father, Michael, creating terrifying medical thrillers. Here Daniel works from his father's unfinished manuscript. Dr. Julie Devereux has found love again after a horrible divorce. Her fiance, Sam, crashes in a horrible motorcycle accident, leaving him quadriplegic. She has always been an advocate for the right to die, but she convinces Sam that she still loves him and nothing has changed. When he passes away from a heart attack soon after he agrees to not pursue suicide, she begins to discover that other patients in the hospital have met similar fates. Her investigation leads her bosses to the inescapable conclusion that she has been performing mercy killings, which means that if she is to prove her innocence, she is likely to become a target for the real murderers. The best medical thrillers force readers to confront tough issues concerning medical ethics, and the right to die is the toughest issue of all. The Palmers juggle solid characters, suspense, and moral complexity into a fine package.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)