The Patient by Michael Palmer

The Patient, Michael Palmer`s ninth medical suspense novel, is a fast-paced beat-the-clock thriller. Someone is killing off the world`s most gifted neurosurgeons, and Alex Bishop, a renegade CIA agent, thinks he knows who it is. Bishop is out to settle his score with Claude Malloche, an international assassin responsible for the death of Bishop`s brother. When he learns that Malloche is afflicted with an inoperable brain tumor, Bishop understands why the murdered neurosurgeons died, and where Malloche will strike next. Meanwhile, Jessie Copeland, an MIT-trained mechanical engineer and neurosurgeon, is working to perfect a robotic device that will revolutionize brain surgery.

One of the patients awaiting surgery at Boston`s Eastern Massachusetts Medical Center is Malloche--but which one? No one has ever been able to identify the assassin, and Jessie is hardly well known enough to attract his notice. But ARTIE, the robotic device, is--and Malloche will stop at nothing to ensure that it`s used to save his own life. He threatens to release a deadly nerve toxin on thousands of innocent people, and Jessie is forced to save him at the cost of her own safety.

Notable for his swift pacing, well-drawn minor as well as major characters, and medical expertise, Palmer delivers the goods with this heart-stopping read. -- Jane Adams3 Cassettes, 5 hours 15 minutes
Read by Lisa Harrow

His name is ARTIE, a miracle of bio-engineering that is about to transform the field of neurosurgery.  Dr. Jessie Copeland knows him better than anyone else at Eastern Mass Medical Center- and knows it`s too soon to be using the tiny robot on a living patient`s brain.  But, Jessie`s department chief is too busy to worry about such ethics.  And neither of them has any idea that ARTIE will attract a patient from their worst nightmares.
Claude Malloche is a master assassin, more rumor than man, for whom murder is an art.  No one can identity his face.  Now Malloche has a deadly brain tumor, and he intends to have the best neurosurgeon in the world operate on it.
To ensure Jessie`s cooperation, Malloche has devised a plan of intimidation that puts at risk her life and the lives of hundreds of innocent people.  Neurosurgery requires nerves of steel, but in coming up with a scheme to fulfill her oath as a doctor while thwarting a diabolical killer, Jessie will be performing the most complex surgery of her career- on a knife-edge of terror.
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