The Pawn of Pharma

De: Evan Jacobs

Narrado por: Sarah Sampino

The Pawn of Pharma is a story about corporate greed, business ethics, family loyalty, a search for purpose, and the excessiveness of the American pharmaceutical industry.

Samantha Harmon, a recently hired sales representative for a multinational drug company, struggles to succeed in the extremely competitive American pharmaceutical industry. Living in the shadows of her widowed father, a high-level executive with the organization, she attempts to develop a career while caught up in a business environment where the players do not always have the public's best interest in mind.

Dr. Goldfarb, a prominent physician, speaker, and promoter for the corporation, creates a web of industry professionals he manipulates in order to gain from the loosely regulated business. Samantha accidentally learns of one of his murderous schemes. Her knowledge threatens to bring down Dr. Goldfarb, ending his profiteering. Consequently, the young woman's life is threatened by those who wish to silence her.

©2005 Evan Jacobs (P)2019 Evan Jacobs

thriller!

good story line almost can be made into a movie. this book by evan Jacobs is a story of a girl a pharma rep who is pushed hard to succeed at any cost and on the way the harsh realities she faces when tables turn on her. the story line is intriguing enough that you wouldn't want to stop listening to this book.

Download it and strap on that seatbelt - it’s a thriller!!

As a diabetic, I’m in doctor’s offices more often than most and in the waiting rooms, there always seems to be pharmaceutical reps who skip the line. So when I saw the title & cover of this book, I thought I’d check it out and I’m so happy I did.

Now in general, I don’t listen to fictional books but I was scheduled to be on the road for work and wanted something light and entertaining to listen to. What I got was 8 hours of thrilling entertainment that left me wanting more each time I had to stop / start the book. I found the story to be unpredictable which kept my interest in what was going to happen next.

The characters, and there are many, were well developed with interesting backstories. I think this book is going to be on the big screen at some point... It sounds and unfolds like a movie and is relative to our current money hungry world. You have the good, the bad and the Mrs. Peters in this thriller.

Download it and strap on that seatbelt. You are going to be on a crazy and thrilling ride! Highly recommended. *****

good page turner

good outlet for those who are disgusted with the excessive profit driven health care system.

Intriguing Storyline

If you enjoyed the Robin Cook genre of deceit and corruption in the medical arena, or the crime and unscrupulousness legal thrillers of John Grisham, then you will definitely like Pawn of a Pharma. Characters are interesting and well developed. At times you may feel like it is losing momentum, but hang in there. Once it does, it is a page turner!

Pharmaceuticals

Samantha Harmon’s loves to dance, but her widowed father believed that this would not be a good career choice for his daughter. He pushes Samantha into changing her major at college and she graduates with a MBA in business. Her father talks her into becoming a drug rep for the Pharmaceutical company in which he is a high ranking executive, with the plan to move into finance after she gains more knowledge about the company. I found this book of great interest as I work at a Doctors’ Medical clinic where we see Pharmaceutical reps on an ongoing basis. I was not really aware of the lengths that pharmaceutical companies will go to push their products on doctors and therefore their patients. The story was insightful and the narration was very good. I was given this free review copy audio book at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

Decent plot but unrealistic characters

The plot of this book is decent, but fueled by characters that seem to be fake caricatures rather than anyone I could envision as a real person. You have the good doctor, some bad doctors, a workaholic boss, an incompetent boss, and a few characters that are supposed to seem more “average” everyday people I guess. However, the relationships between the characters seem implausible at best, both in personal matters and in business matters. Many of the characters are completely evil and unlikeable, with only a few characters that are remotely relatable, which drew me out of the story.

Despite the flaws in the characters, the plot itself kept me intrigued. It was almost like hate-listening, I was so eager to see some of the characters pay for their actions and what happened to the companies discussed that I kept coming back.

The audio quality is good and the narrator does a great job attempting to bring life to some of the flat characters. However, especially in the first couple chapters where many doctors are introduced, it feels like many characters are given similar voices/accents and you only see the narrators true range of voices/accents with some of the characters introduced later in the story.

I was given a free review copy of this audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

S fresh angle on the subject...

As always, I have to state that this book was given to me for free in exchange for a review.
I always like to state that this does not impact my review or my opinion of the book. My reviews are honest and my own opinion of the story, performance, and overall thoughts on the book.

In addition to being a fresh angle on the subject, the story itself is exquisitely crafted. It will have you pondering the backstabbing that goes on at your workplace with a much more aloof perspective. You might even borrow some of the manipulative techniques for your own devilish agenda. In that sense, it is like a handbook for evil!

Amazing Thriller!

This story may seem to start up a bit slow, but don't be fooled. Once the action starts, well, there is no stopping.
The story is amazing and depicts very well the inner workings of the phama industry and marketing. It's scary, because most of it can actually be true. The best part is when one of the characters tries to justify the kind of immoral behavior depicted, as a good thing. There is a bit of love-hate for almost all the characters, even the main one, and that made me like the book even more.
I can totally see this story going up on the big screen or small screen (or both). It was just that good to me.
PS: at one point one character tries to pin the blame on the common folk that get eluded by phama marketing campaigns and demands for specific products ignoring medical advice. Though that may be right sometimes. I do know that phama companies in US have big enough lobbies to push for bills that take freedom of choice from people. For example: children with cancer have to go with quimio treatments even against their parents wishes (and even when doctors agree it's not working), or "normal" values for analises get changed so that people are forced to go under pill treatment earlier for all kinds of problems. There are a lot of documentaries out there about all of this and more. I just wanted to leave that though as it was not apart of the story.

Most entertaining and exciting pharma thriller!

I loved this book and just couldn’t stop listening. In the beginning, I was really entertained learning about some pharma industry details that I was not aware of, and Jacobs likes to play devil's advocate with some of this information that makes you wonder which side are you on. Then, the story made an unexpected switch that hooked me till the end waiting for justice to take place! Overall, the story has a balanced pace and rhythm that led me to enjoy every bit.

Novel exploring the good and bad of big pharma.

I think I have always distrusted the pharmaceutical industry, although Pharma reps have in some ways kept me alive when I had no insurance, and they were more than happy to give the free clinic I was attending samples so that I had the medications that I actually needed. I keep remembering those reps as I read this story, I wonder how many of them sold their souls to keep their employment. This novel does a great job of exploring the good and bad parts of the pharmaceutical industry. There are always going to be those who see only profit, but there are some who do what they do for altruistic ideals.

This novel deals mainly with those driven by profit and just how far man will go to line his nest. Really well written and narrated.