BOOKS

The former junior doc and creator of This Is Going To Hurt discusses his debut crime caper and why the NHS needs to care more for its staff

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A hospital is a perfect setting for a murder, agrees former junior doctor Adam Kay. “I can't be the only person who at medical school was thinking, ‘Oh, if I was a murderer, that would be a good way to do it”.

It’s the setting for his debut novel, A Particularly Nasty Case, a funny, twisty, crime caper that he hopes will make as much noise as his bestselling memoir, This Is Going To Hurt.

“It opens in a gay sauna so it can't be ‘cosy crime’. It's funny crime?” he muses, when asked if he’s joining the genre spearheaded by Richard Osman and the Rev Richard Coles.

“I'm honoured to share a shelf with any crime writer called Richard,” he says. “But I don't think anyone ever makes any noise by trying to cover old ground. I like the idea that I've found my own version.”

The drama begins when a toxic hospital consultant dies of a suspected heart attack. Fellow doctor Eitan Rose isn't convinced, and when another doc dies in similar circumstances, he looks for answers.

There’s a side of romance, too, with a hospital porter who helps in his search for the truth.

But there’s more to this than just a uproarious murder mystery.

Adam, 45, has long been banging the drum for mental health care for doctors, and his protagonist suffers from bipolar disorder, returning to work following the death of a patient, which led to a breakdown.