Review by Booklist Review
A physician with a checkered past (he's lucky to have found a hospital that will employ him) slowly comes to the realization that too many people under care at the hospital are dying. Is it merely the natural outcome of faulty staffing and general shabbiness, or is there something more at work here? Could there be a murderer among the hospital staff? The novel starts at a leisurely pace as Stephenson introduces his characters and the setting, but then, as suspicions grow stronger, things start happening in a rush. The author, who was a practicing physician before turning to writing, does a good job of bringing the hospital environment to life, and the dialogue, too, feels absolutely right--real doctors talking about real cases. This is a fine medical thriller that should be recommended to Robin Cook fans.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
After opioid addiction costs the unnamed 29-year-old narrator of this enjoyable if uneven novel from Stephenson (Set My Heart to Five) his job in a Scottish hospital, he finds work at the desperate, understaffed St. Luke's in London, where he struggles to cope with the onslaught of poverty-stricken patients with "Victorian ailments" and "obscure exotic diseases." When an older patient dies unexpectedly, her barrister daughter's questions prompt a police investigation, which shows an alarming number of unexpected deaths at St. Luke's. The narrator, hauled in for questioning, worries that he's going to be arrested as suspicious deaths continue with no clear pattern of victim or method. When his roommate, an affable orthopedic surgeon, dies by suicide in the hospital parking lot, the narrator relapses. The police arrest a suspect, and the novel's tone shifts from dread to suspense as the narrator turns amateur sleuth when the facts don't seem to add up. Stephenson's sardonic wit and the farce of hapless, overconfident police work prop up the meandering, overlong plot. Most readers will wish the novel cut to the chase a bit more. Stephenson has done better. Agent: Mollie Glick, Creative Artists. (Sept.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Physician-turned-screenwriter Stephenson, who drew on his current career in his recent, nicely received Set My Heart to Five, returns to medicine in this story of a young British doctor working at a hard-pressed east London hospital after returning from a suspension for stealing opioids. When his patients start dying, he suspects murder. With a 75,000-copy first printing; film interest.
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