The biggest thing I've done was get help

A HOSPITAL is a perfect setting for a murder, agrees former junior doctor Adam Kay, author of This Is Going To Hurt, the bestselling memoir which was turned into a TV adaptation starring Ben Whishaw.

- BY HANNAH STEPHENSON

"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,” quips the 45-year-old former doctor-turned-comedian and writer.

He’s now written his debut novel, A Particularly Nasty Case, a funny, acerbic and twisty crime caper with rude bits and quite a lot of swearing.

“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 wryly, “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. Certainly if it can sit on the bestseller lists with the Richards, I’m very happy.”

The drama begins when a toxic hospital consultant dies suddenly of a suspected heart attack. Fellow doctor, consultant rheumatologist Eitan Rose, isn’t convinced, and when another senior doctor dies in similar circumstances he sets out to prove that there’s more to these deaths than meets the eye.

There's a side order of romance with a hospital porter called Cole, who helps Rose in his search for the truth.

But there’s more to this first novel than just an uproarious murder mystery. Adam has long been banging the drum for better provision of mental health care for doctors, so unsurprisingly his protagonist suffers from bipolar disorder, and is returning to work following the death of a patient in his care which led to a breakdown.

Adam too has suffered both professional and personal trauma. When he left the medical profession in 2010, where he was a junior doctor in obstetrics and gynaecology, he suffered nightmares and PTSD, and didn’t seek counselling until seven years later, after This Is Going To Hurt was published.