Palmer MichaelS

American physician, mystery writer and novelist. As an M.D. and emergency room physician, he became addicted to prescription drugs. When found out and fired in 1979, he contemplated suicide. Instead he drove to a support group. Four months later he was clean and sober and landed a $250,000 advance for a thriller called "The Sisterhood." He blazed his reputation with six whodunit novels that sold nearly six million copies, putting him into the high-income bracket. His "Extreme Measures" was made into a movie. Palmer was the son of an optometrist and a homemaker. By 1970 he was running a free clinic in Cincinnati, and his drinking was steadily increasing. Married with two sons, he was kicked out of the house by his wife Judy in 1971. He began taking tranquilizers at that time. He met Noelle at a Boston benefit and they married in 1989 and their son Luke was born in 1991. Working in the high-stress atmosphere of the E.R. 1980-1991, he went over the top with substance abuse until his turn-around. Link to Wikipedia biography Read less