Naturally, he has met with much opposition from the coal company since more stringent procedures would lessen their profits, and from the majority of the townspeople who rely on the company for their livelihood.

Recently Matt has witnessed the death of two local residents who presented bizarre symptoms. Their faces had become horribly disfigured with growths called neurofibromas. Subsequent to the appearance of these growths, the patients’ behavior had become more and more paranoid until their deaths due to accidents caused by their irrational behavior. Matt dubs this condition the Belinda Syndrome.

Meanwhile, Boston pathologist Nikki Solari notices symptoms identical to Matt’s patients in her roommate Kathy Wilson. Kathy is killed when she darts out into the street directly into the path of an oncoming truck. Is it coincidence that Kathy Wilson hails from Belinda, West Virginia?

In a seemingly unrelated situation, Ellen Kroft is on a mission to halt the mass inoculation of infants and small children. Her young granddaughter, Lucy, an apparently bright, outgoing baby, developed symptoms of autism after receiving her baby shots. Ellen learns that “a small percentage” of children react adversely to inoculations, but legislators and pharmaceutical companies believe that “for the common good” inoculations should continue. In fact the government is about to institute mandatory inoculation of all infants with a “super vaccine” purportedly providing protection against thirty different diseases.

These three strangers are actually working on different aspects of the same problem. They hold unique information which, when added together has the potential to save, or lose, many lives. How they eventually meet and combine their bits of knowledge to reach a common goal makes exciting and thoughtful entertainment for a summer evening.

Michael Palmer is well known for his medical thrillers and his latest offering, Fatal is a worthy addition to his already impressive list of novels. The plot is the thing in this one. How can toxic waste be the culprit in producing such a weird syndrome? Why are just some of the local residents exhibiting these symptoms? And why now, when the coal company has been negligent in their safety practices for a considerable period of time? Why should a former resident who has not lived in the area for years, develop similar symptoms? The who and, probably, the why part of the problem can be fairly easily deduced by the astute reader. The how, which is the more interesting question in this novel, is a bit more of a challenge.

The characters, while interesting, are not particularly complex individuals. Their actions are predictable and pretty much what one would expect from heroes, heroines, and bad guys. The good guys don’t have fatal flaws or serious character defects that impede their progress or judgment, and they receive a generous amount of help from Lady Luck enabling them to triumph. The bay guys’ greedy nature, of course, does them in - providing a satisfying conclusion for those that like happy endings.

As is the case with most of Dr. Palmer’s novels, Fatal has a moral message for its readers. Valid arguments are presented against marketing medication without sufficient double blind testing, which is, of course, an expensive proposition. Toxic waste disposal also gets a fair amount of verbiage. In addition, the author has presented a list of sources for more information about these issues should the reader be interested in learning more about these controversial topics.

--Andy Plonka