One, Extreme Measures (1991), was adapted into a 1996 film of the same name starring Hugh Grant, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Gene Hackman.

[4] Before he began work on his first published novel, The Sisterhood, about euthanasia, Palmer was practicing treatment of drug addiction.

[citation needed] Side Effects (1985), his second published work, was about the testing of unapproved drugs on a patient in Nazi Germany, but his most famous novel proved to be Extreme Measures (1991), in which a promising young doctor is threatened by a hospital elite after discovering the body's criminal acts.

A selection of his other books include: Natural Causes (1994), about a holistic doctor who prescribes medicine that actually kills patients; Miracle Cure (1998), about a drug for heart disease that actually is very dangerous because of its side effects; and Extreme Measures (1991) on which the eponymous 1996 thriller film starring Hugh Grant, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Gene Hackman is based.

[6] On October 29, 2013, Palmer unexpectedly suffered a heart attack and stroke, dying the next day in New York City.