Review: SOMETIMES PEOPLE DIE, Simon Stephenson

• 
  This edition available on Kindle
• A SUNDAY TIMES Crime Book of the Month and NEW YORK TIMES Editor Pick
  
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09RPM3CTQ
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ The Borough Press (September 1, 2022)
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 353 pages
• Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0008547610

Synopsis (Amazon)

The year is 1999. Returning to practice after a suspension for stealing opioids, a young Scottish doctor takes the only job he can find: a post as a senior house officer in the struggling east London hospital of St Luke’s.

Amid the maelstrom of sick patients, over-worked staff and underfunded wards a darker secret soon declares itself: too many patients are dying.

Which of the medical professionals our protagonist has encountered is behind the murders? And can our unnamed narrator’s version of the events be trusted?

My Take

A young doctor is caught up in an investigation into a series of deaths in the London hospital he is working in as a junior doctor. Because of his previous history of opioid theft the police treat him as their prime suspect. Eventually all the doctors and nurses come under suspicion.

The narrative is written 20 years later, when the young doctor has finally worked out who was responsible for the deaths of a number of patients. The reader is taken on the journey of discovery that he went through.

Chapters of the book are interspersed with descriptions of people who in history have been healthcare serial killers. In some cases the number of deaths they were responsible for was incredible.

A well cosnstructed novel and an enjoyable read.

My rating: 4.6

About the author

Hello!

I am from Edinburgh in Scotland, but live now in Los Angeles. I have had stopovers along the way in London and San Francisco.

I’m a writer and screenwriter, and before I became a full-time writer I was a physician.

My new novel, ‘Sometimes People Die’ will be published in September 2022.

I have written two other books. ‘Set My Heart To Five’ came out in 2020. The Washington Post review said that I might be ‘Vonnegut’s first true protege’. You’d better believe I am going to be dining out on that for the rest of my life.

‘Let Not the Waves Of the Sea’, my memoir about losing my brother came out in 2012. It won Best First Book at the Scottish Book Awards, and was serialized on BBC Radio 4.

I’ve worked as a writer on various films including Pixar’s LUCA, PADDINGTON 2, and my own THE ELECTRICAL LIFE OF LOUIS WAIN. Like every other screenwriter in Hollywood, I have a bottom drawer full of unproduced scripts and forgotten promises. So it goes.