Sometimes People Die: A SUNDAY TIMES Crime Book of the Month and NEW YORK TIMES Editor Pick

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Those who fear the hospital should stay far away from this book! I’m not a fan of hospitals, but statistically speaking, the chances of having an “angel of death” taking care of me in a hospital are pretty small. The premise is good but unfortunately I don’t know where to start with this novel as in my opinion it’s a game of two halves. I nearly give up on the first half as there’s far too much hospital, way too much medical detail for me and not enough plot which makes me wonder if I’m reading a medical text. It’s a slow, slow plod of a pace and I don’t find it very inspiring. In addition, I have no idea why it’s necessary to include other medical miscreants?? Do we actually need to know the first recorded health care murder for example? It’s AD64 by Greek doctor Xenophon if you’re interested!!!

Why do I adore this kind of novel? It is intelligent, very witty in a very dark way, and does not flinch from serious and difficult questions.’ I thoroughly enjoyed this - despite the trauma of a trip down memory lane from having worked in British hospitals myself only a few years before the time it’s set. The writing is brilliant, and the observations astute - only actual doctors know the pressures that distort your thinking to the point where incarceration can seem preferable to going to work: “I found myself inevitably thinking again about what my life in prison might be like. I did not seem likely to do well there, but consoled myself that perhaps I could ingratiate myself to the other inmates by providing them medical care. Beyond that, the sole upside I could think of was that I would at least no longer have to work nights.”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. As a nurse there are certain maxims which run true, including that just sometimes people die, not matter what you could have done, or did do, the march of death is inevitable. And this goes double for our care of the elderly patients, which is so vividly realised in this novel, it is seen as a less than stellar career choice for the medical professional and a thankless task to navigate. I’m looking forward to seeing what Simon does next. Oh, I also wanted to say this would make either a great movie or TV series… just saying.

It looked like an asylum that a distracted child had constructed from a half dozen unmatched Lego sets." (St. Luke's- the hospital where he is hired.)This title caught my eye when a GoodReads friend commented in her review that it had too much medicine in it for her - a big plus for me: I generally love crime thrillers written by real doctors, and the more bleak hippocratic humour the better. Sometimes People Die is like a version of This Is Going To Hurt as written by Gregory House - but without all the objects being retrieved from orifices. This is part memoir - an accurate portrayal of life as a junior hospital doctor in the late nineties NHS, but with a serial killer mystery thrown in to broaden the appeal to lovers of true crime. It is entirely fictional, apart from the inserts about famous murderous medics from across the ages every few chapters - other reviewers have felt these to be an unnecessary distraction from the plot, but I found them fascinating. Simon has written two other books. ‘Set My Heart To Five’ came out in 2020. The Washington Post review said that he might be ‘Vonnegut’s first true protege’. The criminal element comes into play when it’s discovered that several of St. Luke’s patients have died from opioid overdoses, clearly at the hands of medical personnel, with our narrator suspect number one. Woven throughout the book are the stories of doctors throughout history who doubled as serial killers—these sojourns away from the narrative will drive some readers crazy but I found the context they provided fascinating. In the end, the book comes down to just a few characters and a couple of questions: How does medicine, “a dark and a terrible knowledge,” force its practitioners to see things differently? And what’s the impact when they do see differently? —Brian Kenney

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. 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? About This Edition ISBN: Drawing on his experiences as a physician, Simon Stephenson takes readers into the dark heart of life as a hospitalist to ask the question: Who are the people we gift the power of life and death, and what does it do to them?

I am from Edinburgh in Scotland, but now reside in Los Angeles, California. 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. It only got better and better as I progressed through the book. If it’s a little slow for you initially, keep with it. Let Not the Waves Of the Sea’, Simon’s memoir about losing his brother came out in 2012. It won Best First Book at the Scottish Book Awards, and was serialized on BBC Radio 4. 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? Another thing I enjoyed about the book are the occasional sections that describe real life murderers who practiced medicine, from famous cases such as Dr. Crippen and Harold Shipman to less well-known ones. What’s surprising – or perhaps depressing is a better word – is how long in some cases it took for their crimes to be discovered, either through negligence or a kind of medical omerta.

Author Simon Stephenson was a physician who turned into a screenplay writer, and now author of “Sometimes People Die”. Our narrator informs us, at a hospital, people die. Some deaths garner a shrug, some a head shake. Not all are alarming, especially if the person was very ill, elderly, or frail. But when statistically unlikely “early” deaths occur, the hospital takes note. The Sunday Times - Crime and Thriller Book of the Month ‘Stephenson was a doctor before he was a writer, and the best part of this moody thriller, a slow-burning investigation into a spate of unexplained deaths at an underfunded London hospital, is its authoritative, unsparing account of what it’s like to work in such a place.’ Loved this read. For the first quarter I would have given it 5 stars. It got nihilistic during the last quarter which took it down about 1/2 star. But this book TRULY did make me laugh out loud about 7 or 8 times in a dreary fall gloom rainfall darkness. No small task. Just as I consider giving up it starts to get interesting… finally! The pace starts to go above that of a country stroll though it’s never brisk partly because of the narrator's delivery. Suspicions start to fall in several places, there’s a tragedy and some rather good plot twists you do not expect. Unfortunately, you have to be very patient for those to arrive. There is a good premise in here but initially it’s well concealed under a plethora of medical jargon.Our narrator is unsparing when it comes to admitting his own weaknesses, meaning the reader never loses sympathy with him even during his most serious lapses and expecially when he finds himself under suspicion of involvement in what turns out to be a case of murder. His compassion and dedication to his patients is never in doubt, unless of course you agree with the detectives assigned to the case that’s he’s the obvious culprit. I particularly loved his friendship with the affable George whose offer of a room allows him to escape from his previous accommodation, aka Stalag Motorsport. Wow. This is an intriguing idea for a novel: a drug addled doctor finds himself in an underfunded/staffed hospitals where there is a growing list of suspicious deaths. This is a mystery of who is killing the patients; it’s a suspense in that our narrator, the drug addled physician is the one we are relying on to figure it out. Can the narrator keep clean and sus it out?