A Particularly Nasty Case by Adam Kay

From the author of the bestselling memoir This is Going to Hurt comes a seriously funny debut novel. What we have here is a scintillating murder mystery set in the medical world that Adam Kay knows so well. The humour is irreverent, dark, quirky and very, very clever. The dialogue and banter are engaging and entertaining, and the storytelling is top-notch.

Being enticed into a very dodgy gay sex sauna and having to use his medical expertise to save the life of one of the guests wasn’t quite the end of the day he was looking for. When a very unpopular hospital consultant drops dead from a heart attack, there isn’t a lot of sympathy for his passing and certainly no suspicion.

However, after another senior doctor suffers a similar fate, something doesn’t add up. To make matters worse, his own life is in a state of chaos, though nothing that drugs and alcohol can’t fix if only he could use them in moderation and not while at work. The police and coroner do not share his concerns, and he needs to decide whether he pursues his own suspicions and risks making a career-ending mistake or lies low and tries to sort his own life out.

If Agatha Christie and Carl Hiaasen sat down with a bottle of whiskey to write a novel together, then this is pretty close to what you would probably get.

Reviewer: Chris Casey

Hachette