The Fifth Vial cover art

The Fifth Vial

Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

The Fifth Vial

By: Michael Palmer
Narrated by: J. Charles
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £21.99

Buy Now for £21.99

Only £0.99 a month for the first 3 months. Pay £0.99 for the first 3 months, and £8.99/month thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Start my membership

About this listen

Get drawn into a novel of medical suspense that begins with these chilling questions: Who ends up with the blood samples you routinely give for tests? What else are they being used for? Why don't you know?

From Boston, a disgraced medical student travels to South America to deliver a research paper that could save her career and becomes a victim of an unspeakable crime....Thousands of miles away, a brilliant, reclusive scientist, dying from an incurable disease that threatens to make each tortured breath his last, is on the verge of perfecting a serum that could save millions of lives, and bring others inestimable wealth....In Chicago, a disillusioned private detective, on the way to his third career, is hired to determine the identity of a John Doe, killed on a Florida highway, with mysterious marks on his body.

Three seemingly disconnected lives, surging unrelentingly toward one another. Three lives becoming irrevocably intertwined. Three lives in mounting peril, moving ever closer to the ultimate confrontation against a deadly secret society with godlike aspirations and roots in antiquity.

Medical student. Scientist. Private eye. Three people who will learn the deeper meanings of brilliance and madness, truth and deception, trust and betrayal.

Three lives linked forever by a single vial of blood: the fifth vial.

©2007 Michael Palmer (P)2007 Brilliance Audio
Genre Fiction Medical Mystery Suspense Thriller & Suspense Scary

Listeners also enjoyed...

The Ghost Slept Over cover art
Many Are the Dead cover art
Free the Darkness cover art
Redshirts cover art
The Crown Tower (Dramatized Adaptation) cover art
First to Kill cover art
Off to Be the Wizard cover art
Elantris (1 of 3) [Dramatized Adaptation] cover art
The Very First Damned Thing cover art
Storm Front cover art
14 cover art
Envy cover art
Area 51 cover art
Written in Red cover art
The Chronicles of Jonathan Tibbs: The Complete Trilogy cover art
The Stone Man - A Science Fiction Thriller, Book 1 cover art

Critic reviews

"A terrifying vision of the Hippocratic oath gone very wrong." ( Entertainment Weekly)
"Palmer taps a real medical issue for storytelling thrills." ( Boston magazine)
"A tale set at the very edge of our medical knowledge. I loved it!" (Tess Gerritsen)
All stars
Most relevant
Power corrupts and this book talks about how power corrupts the medical profession. Lots of tangled webs and interweaving of stories. I enjoyed it immensely.

Would make a great movie

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Having had a few books that we did not like much I had chosen this one. What a surpise, Enjoyed it thouroughly, suspence, murder, baddies and goodies, and it grips you right to the end. It may even be possible...............!?

What a surprise

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.