{"id":2058,"date":"2022-05-12T15:58:59","date_gmt":"2022-05-12T15:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=2058"},"modified":"2023-03-11T18:43:03","modified_gmt":"2023-03-11T18:43:03","slug":"sometimes-people-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=2058","title":{"rendered":"Sometimes People Die"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>If you open this book thinking it\u2019s a medical thriller\u2014which is how it\u2019s marketed\u2014then you\u2019ll be terribly disappointed. But take it on its own terms and it is one of the most evocative and heart-rendering tales you\u2019ll have encountered in quite a while.<\/strong> A young Scottish doctor, caught stealing and using opioids, is deemed fit to return to practice and lands in St. Luke\u2019s\u2014one of London\u2019s roughest hospitals and a place that\u2019s desperately in need of staff. Author Stephenson was trained as a doctor, and this book goes deeply\u2014and fascinatingly\u2014into life in the hospital. Add to this a great cast of characters, including George, an orthopedist, rugby player, and teddy bear of a man who rooms with our protagonist, helping to keep him grounded. The criminal element comes into play when it\u2019s discovered that several of St. Luke\u2019s 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\u2014these 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, \u201ca dark and a terrible knowledge,\u201d force its practitioners to see things differently? And what\u2019s the impact when they do see differently?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you open this book thinking it\u2019s a medical thriller\u2014which is how it\u2019s marketed\u2014then you\u2019ll be terribly disappointed. But take it on its own terms and it is one of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2057,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[61,136,55,52,50,51],"class_list":["post-2058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-amateur-sleuth","tag-medical","tag-mystery-detective","tag-psychological","tag-suspense","tag-thrillers"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/People-Die-400x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/People-Die-400x600.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Brian Kenney","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=1"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}