This book states its purpose as a guide for programmers who "inherited" legacy Perl code from other people. In fact, it's just a "best practices in Perl" book in disguise, which is very good, since I haven't read another such book with Perl specifically in mind. There are "best practices" books for many languages, and quite a few non-language-specific books, but a Perl one was certainly missing.

The book is short and is written in a light and talkative style, which makes is easy and very quick to read. The author also includes many code samples with a clear hands-on approach, which is something I like about technical books.

There are many good and interesting bits of information in the "Perl Medic". I especially liked the discussion of testing with the Test:: modules - though intended strictly for Perl, I feel this is the best treatment of the subject of testing I've ever read. There are also a lot of discussion about some of the more arcane features of Perl which are nice to keep in mind. Throughout the book the author also presents many useful CPAN modules for various tasks and discusses when it's appropriate to use each.

All in all, a very nice Perl book for readers well past the Learning+Camel+Cookbook stage. Reading this book can definitely bring you a step higher in your Perl expertise, which is a very nice return for the 4-5 hours you'll spend reading it.