Side Effects

Those who feel disheartened by the state of the NHS in Britain can take dubious comfort; according to Michael Palmer, things are very much worse in the United States! Needless to say, this is a medical melodrama, and power-hungry doctors, crazed medical technicians and terminally greedy pharmaceutical companies rampage at will through hospital wards, casually experimenting with whatever patient they choose. This sitation is not rare in Palmer's thrillers, though we can rely on the hero battling his way through corpses and malicious authorities to a final triumph. In this case the brew is thickened by the hidden presence of a Nazi survivor of the Women's Death Camp at Ravensbruck, still intent on proving his sterilization theories at whatever human cost. This time too, the hero is a woman, the brave and beautiful Dr Kate Bennett. Not only must she fight to save lives, to expose the jealous villains who would deny her the role of Head of Pathology, but she has a personal problem - she has promised her husband to leave work and have a child, yet she fears both motherhood and his seeming denial of her right to her own career. The drama increases non-stop, and those who are happy to suspend belief will have an exciting few hours with the labyrinthine excesses of Palmer's cast of medical malpractitioners. Review by Sister Wendy Beckett (Kirkus UK)