While there are hundreds of books about plagues and epidemics-and likely many more to come after this year-this is a good example of a how a medical thriller doesn’t have to be only about solving a medical mystery or racing for a cure. But I chose Outbreak, featuring a pediatrician turned CDC epidemiologist who investigates a devastating Ebola outbreak that may have been deliberate. When asked to name a novel by Robin Cook, widely considered the founding father of medical thrillers, most think of his debut Coma. If you like stories set outside the ER, you’ll love Adverse Effects and these seven other medical thrillers. Silva’s quest for answers takes her from her Boston-based private practice to the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, and through the chaotic jungles of her own mind. My debut medical thriller, Adverse Effects, involves psychiatrist Cristina Silva and an experimental memory drug implicated in the deaths of her patients-a drug she’s also taking. So, when I think of medical mysteries and malfeasance, I often think outside the trauma box. The villain!Īs a developmental-behavioral pediatrician, I spend very little time in the emergency room, and none in an operating room. Finding the answer is a significant part, but the suspense commonly lies in identifying and stopping whoever’s behind the threat. But threats arrive in different forms: biologic, technological, or forensic. In a medical thriller, sometimes it’s simply a race against the clock to stop a contagious outbreak. In a drama, like ER, the focus is on the diagnosis and treatment of rare diseases and conditions, and the thrill emerges from uncovering the answer in time. Falling under the crime fiction umbrella, medical thrillers are not the same as medical drama. And even that doesn’t include all the therapy programs, research labs, hospices and other health care settings where crazy and terrifying things can happen. There are thirty-five other non-surgical physician specialties besides emergency and intensive care medicine, and in each one there is plenty of opportunity for something to go wrong, intentionally or unintentionally (and, of course, it’s the intentional that make for a gripping thriller). Carter and Knight, only for Knight to die in the catheter lab?ĭoes that mean a medical thriller is only exciting if it’s set in the ER? Can it be suspenseful without long scenes involving doctors performing advanced life support procedures? Who can forget the gut-wrenching scene when a psychotic patient stabbed Drs. Why else would ER have lasted fifteen seasons (ten of those without Clooney)? And operating rooms, while not as fast-paced, are intense, as surgeons dig around inside living bodies, and one false move can spell disaster. What do readers expect from medical thrillers? Search through the book blurbs by these three authors and you’ll see a common theme: most (but not all) are set in an emergency room or an operating room. Gerritsen’s Harvest and Palmer’s Extreme Measures remain two of my all-time favorite novels, and Palmer helped me embark on own writing career.
I don’t blame them-these were my favorite authors as well. With rare exception, everyone named books by Robin Cook, Tess Gerritsen, or Michael Palmer.
Recently, I asked readers in a Facebook group to name their favorite medical thriller novels.