Although I come from a family with a number of medical professionals, I am not one myself. My interest in medical thrillers is a three-strand braid that combines my learning and experiences in the fields of sociology, literature, and storytelling. Horrific as the stories on this list are, they share both a hopefulness that mankind is capable of overcoming whatever challenge nature presents, or they themselves conjure and a warning to get ourselves right before the next one comes along. At a time when it is tempting to despair over the human condition, I hope these books inspire your faith in mankindās resourcefulness and ability to endure.
This novel was my ālove at first readā book for medical thrillers.Ā From this novel on, I wasĀ hooked on medical thrillers.
The manner in which Crichton wove together science andĀ literary prose in a manner that was simultaneously erudite yet comprehensible fascinated me. I felt respected as a reader.
From the author of Jurassic Park, Timeline, and Sphere comes a captivating thriller about a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism, which threatens to annihilate human life. Ā Five prominent biophysicists have warned the United States government that sterilization procedures for returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere. Two years later, a probe satellite falls to the earth and lands in a desolate region of northeastern Arizona. Nearby, in the town of Piedmont, bodies lie heaped and flung across the ground, faces locked in frozen surprise. What could cause such shock and fear? The terror has begun,ā¦
Witnessing vicariously the symptoms and death throes associated with the outbreak ofĀ the Ebola virus in Central Africa left me horrified.
The narrow margins by which such an outbreak was prevented from happening here in the States raised my awareness of the potential for a viral outbreak in my own backyard.
The bestselling landmark account of the first emergence of the Ebola virus.
Now a mini-series drama starring Julianna Margulies, Topher Grace, Liam Cunningham, James D'Arcy, and Noah Emmerich on National Geographic.
A highly infectious, deadly virus from the central African rain forest suddenly appears in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. There is no cure. In a few days 90 percent of its victims are dead. A secret military SWAT team of soldiers and scientists is mobilized to stop the outbreak of this exotic "hot" virus. The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story, giving a hair-raising account of the appearance ofā¦
Fall 2028. Mickey Cooper, an elderly homeless man, receives an incredible proposition from a rogue pharmaceutical company: āBe our secret guinea pig for our new drug, and weāll pay you life-changing money, which youāll be able to enjoy because if (cough) when the treatment works, two months from now yourā¦
I especially love this novel as Camus applies his background in existential philosophy to elevate the medical thriller genre into the realm of the metaphysical.
I love how the novel uses the plot device of an outbreak of the plague to force me as a reader to moveĀ beyond the surface questions of āWhat?ā āWhen?ā and āWhere?ā to ask the deeper question of āWhy?ā and āWhat now?ā
āIts relevance lashes you across the face.ā āStephen Metcalf, The Los Angeles Times ā¢ āA redemptive book, one that wills the reader to believe, even in a time of despair.ā āRoger Lowenstein, The Washington PostĀ
A haunting tale of human resilience and hope in the face of unrelieved horror, Albert Camus' iconic novel about an epidemic ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic of twentieth-century literature.Ā
The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as theyā¦
I enjoy that this novel does not use the plague device. Rather, it explores the ramifications of the abuse of power by authorities who manipulate private citizens to be unwitting participants in medical experimentations.
Rarely are medical thrillersāespecially those of the plague varietyāsexy books, yet this book manages to be so, as a decrease in sexual inhibitions is a side effect of the chemical being foisted on the populace.
Returning home to the small Louisiana parish where he had praticed psychiatry, Dr. Tom More quickly notices something strange occuring with the townfolk, a loss of inhibitions. Behind this mystery is a dangerous plot drug the local water supply, and a discovery that takes More into the underside of the American search for happiness.
The most recently published on my list of medical thrillers is The Desperate Hours, which is an account from the front lines of the COVID-19 epidemic as it ravaged New York City.
This one is especially meaningful for me because my pathologist brother, Kevin, was living and working in the midst of the chaos the epidemic caused. Even more poignant for me is the fact that he is quoted in the book.
It is a harrowing account of the tragic reality of that period which, Iām afraid, too many are failing to heed its warning of the potential for even worse future plagues.
In the spring of 2020, COVID-19 arrived in New York City.
Before long, America's largest metropolis was at war against a virus that mercilessly swept through its five boroughs. It became apparent that if Covid wasn't somehow halted, the death count in New York alone would be in the hundreds of thousands. And if New York's hospitals failed, what chance did the rest of the country have?
In The Desperate Hours, award-winning journalist Marie Brenner, having been granted unprecedented 18-month access to the entire New York-Presbyterian hospital system, tells the story of the doctors, nurses, residents, researchers, andā¦
My book paints a disturbing picture of the lengths to which governmental authorities might be willing to go to prevent a localized case of the bird flu virus crossover from spilling over into the general population, reluctant to instigate a socio-political fallout similar to the COVID shutdown of 2020.
Meanwhile, on Kelleys Island off the coast of Northern Ohio in Lake Erie (Island No. 6), a quarantined and increasingly desperate mixed population of full-time residents and day trippers divide into camps as they wage a losing battle against a virus that is causing them to devolve towards a brutal state of nature while it decimates their numbers with alarming speed and effectiveness.
One of Dr. Mark Lin's patients is killed by a suicide bomber blowing up a clinic. Everyone points the finger at anti-abortion extremists. Mark, however, has a different theory about the culprit: a secretive healing cult called the Path to Purity.
Didnāt Get FrazzledĀ captures with distressing accuracy the gauntlet idealistic college grads must face to secure an MD and, against the odds, come out of it a better human being.
Medical student Seth Levine faces escalating stress and gallows humor as four years of medical school shatter all preconceived notionsā¦
