From a display viewpoint, here is a question for you. Is it OK if, for the duration of this display, the document is open full-screen or in its own window? And is Word installed on the machines where you want to do this? And are all of the documents available as Word documents? (You had mentioned PDF documents, but was that for option purposes or because you have a mixed bag?)
I ask all that because it is not that hard to open a Word application object, open a specific document in READ-ONLY mode (so you don't have to worry about saving anything), and then closing Word when the user closes the document. I've done this more than once and it is actually relatively easy.