Michael Palmer Books in Order

Michael Palmer was an American doctor who worked for twenty years in internal and emergency medicine while building his career as a medical thriller author. Most of his books were standalone novels, but he also created Dr. Lou Welcome, an ER doctor who helps other doctors recover from illness, addiction or other mental-health problems through a Physician Wellness Office.

Palmer had first-hand knowledge of this work, as he spent years helping doctors through the Massachusetts Medical Society’s physician health program. He was also in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction himself. Lou Welcome has a similar history, so Michael Palmer gave his character some of his own experience as well.

Michael Palmer died in 2013, but his books continued with his name on the cover for several years. Resistant, published in 2014, was his own final Lou Welcome novel. His son Daniel Palmer wrote Trauma from an idea his father had but never got to write. He then wrote two more medical thrillers, Mercy and The First Family, with all three published under both their names.

The bibliography below includes the Lou Welcome series, Michael Palmer’s standalone novels, short stories, and the later books written by Daniel Palmer.

A printable book list is available below. You can print it or save it as a PDF.

Who Wrote the Michael Palmer Books Published After His Death?

Michael Palmer died on October 30, 2013, but four novels with his name on the cover were still published afterward.

Resistant, the third and last Dr. Lou Welcome book, was published in May 2014. Michael Palmer wrote the whole book, but it was published after his death. Daniel Palmer did not finish it, and he did not take over the Lou Welcome series.

Trauma, on the other hand, was written entirely by Daniel Palmer from the basic idea Michael Palmer had for his next medical thriller. The hospital setting and the young female doctor were already there. Daniel Palmer later explained that he took his father’s premise and wrote the novel by himself. Trauma was published under both Michael and Daniel Palmer’s names in 2015.

Before his death, Michael Palmer left behind journals, files and unused ideas. Daniel used some of this material when writing Trauma and Mercy. Mercy also appeared under both authors’ name in 2016, but the actual copyright belongs to Daniel Palmer.

After these books were published, St. Martin’s Press asked Daniel to continue writing Michael Palmer medical thrillers. He then wrote The First Family, which was published in 2018, again under both authors’ names. Macmillan describes this last novel as a Daniel Palmer medical drama written in the tradition of his late father.

While Daniel Palmer continued writing standalone medical thrillers, he did not continue the Lou Welcome series, which ended with Resistant, a novel written entirely by Michael Palmer, published after his death.

How Michael Palmer Built His Medical Thrillers

Michael Palmer started each of his novels with a quick What If? question. He developed the answer to that question first, and then he decided who the main character would be or what the rest of the story would look like.

For example, for Sisterhood, the question was, what would happen if a secret group of nurses were doing mercy killings. Extreme Measures started with the idea of a drug that would make a person look dead to even the most trained doctor, when that person is actually alive. And for The Patient, the question was what would happen if a dangerous terrorist had a brain tumor and needed surgery.

After he had his central question, Michael Palmer then would decide whose story it was. Then he would build the characters around the story. He also liked to outline a lot, sometimes writing dozens of outline pages, which gave him the structure of the book before starting to write the actual chapters.

His work with the Massachusetts Medical Society gave him the basis for the Lou Welcome series. Over the years, Michael Palmer helped physician with drug and mental issues, through Physician Health Services, and that gave the start for Lou’s own similar work at the fictional Physician Wellness Office, where he helped doctors with treatments and recovery, which allowed them to return to their medical practice.

While Palmer had a lot of material coming from his own medical background and actual medical experience, there were a lot of subjects he didn’t know well, so he talked to specialists and read extensively on those topics. One of the questions he would always ask experts was whether the idea was possible. If the answer was yes, even if quite unlikely, he would find a way to use it in his story.

Michael Palmer Book Adaptations

• Extreme Measures – adapted into the feature film Extreme Measures (1996)

About Michael Palmer

Michael Stephen  Palmer was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1942 and grew up in Longmeadow. He went to Wesleyan University as a pre-med student, graduating in 1964, and later studied medicine at Case Western Reserve University. After medical school, he trained in internal medicine at Boston City Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Official Website: Michael Palmer Thrillers

Michael Palmer spent two years in Cincinnati, where he did research for the National Air Pollution Control Administration as part of his military obligation. Eventually, he settled on Cape Cod and opened a private internal-medicine practice.

Originally, he never intended to write books as part of his career. In fact, he started writing during a very rough time in life. In the 1970s, after a divorce and several knee surgeries, he became dependent on self-prescribed pain medication and alcohol. In 1978 he was charged with writing false prescriptions, received two years’ probation and had his hospital privileges suspended. His situation worsened, and at some point he even thought of ending his own life. In late 1979, he stopped drinking and taking drugs, after he got psychiatric help and support from other recovering physicians.

Around the same time, Palmer read Robin Cook’s Coma. Robin Cook had been two years ahead of him at Wesleyan University, and the two had also trained at Massachusetts General Hospital at the same time. Seeing someone with such a similar medical background write a successful thriller made him wonder whether he could do the same.

He began writing The Corey Prescription, a story inspired by a dying patient who had once handed him a mysterious key and asked him to keep it safe. Palmer never discovered what the key opened, so he invented his own answer and created a story around it. Writing also gave him something he could control while he had no control over his own life at the time. The Corey Prescription was never published in English, but several foreign publishers later released translations of the manuscript.

After about a year, he sent the finished manuscript to a friend who worked in publishing. The friend told him the story needed a lot of work, but he introduced him to literary agent Jane Rotrosen. She agreed to work with him if he started a new story from a fresh idea.

That new story became his debut novel, The Sisterhood, about a secret group of nurses carrying out mercy killings. It was published in 1982. The book stayed on the Times list for eight weeks, and it became the start of Michael Palmer’s novelist career. Once The Sisterhood sold, Michael Palmer left private medicine and started working in the ER, which gave him more time to write.

Later, he also started working part time with the Massachusetts Medical Society’s physician health program, where, as an associate director, he helped other physicians with their illnesses, mental health issues, and drug addictions. Having been through all these himself, he knew just how to help other physicians in the same situation.

His books were published in thirty-five languages, and Extreme Measures was made into a movie in 1996. Michael Palmer continued writing until his unexpected death in New York on October 30, 2013, at the age of 71.

His son Daniel continued the Michael Palmer medical-thrillers name. He wrote Trauma from a story idea that his father had for a book, and then wrote Mercy and The First Family. All three standalone novels have both author names on the cover, but Daniel Palmer wrote the novels.

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