Loved loved loved it! It holds the tension and mystery until the very end, and really enjoyed the narrator’s voice and complex character background. Such an interesting and thought provoking topic as well.

This was everything you need for a thriller and crime story. It is not as black and white as you first think and like most typical thrillers, is full of twists. This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

3.5/5.

Sometimes People Die is a really good book by a former doctor, turned author and screenwriter. When first reading it I had to keep reminding myself it was a novel, as it reads exactly like a junior doctor’s hospital memoirs. It contains stories that are funny and sad, reflect the shortcomings of the health service and how hard the junior doctors have to work and how mistakes can be made and overlooked in busy hospital departments. It then leads into what is more clearly (hopefully!) a work of fiction where the slightly hopeless protagonist, a failing junior doctor struggling with an opiates addiction, tries to avoid being the main suspect in the murder investigation that is launched at St Luke’s Hospital where he works. Will our narrator avoid the clutches of the detectives or will there be a wrongful conviction?
An excellent novel, that I would highly recommend.
Thanks to NetGalley and the author for a Kindle copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I 10/10 loved this book. A comment that those of you who have read Set My Heart to Five, also by this author, will understand. If you haven't then I do recommend you look it up!
So... we have an unnamed narrator who, for the purposes of this review I will just call Doc. He has had a bit of a past, being suspended for stealing and taking opioids and has only just been cleared back to practice when we first catch up to him in 1999. He has taken the only job going, one which apparently no one else wants, that of a senior house officer in a downtrodden area of east London. A far cry from where he came from in Scotland. But, needs must. And he is determined to turn it all around.
So Doc starts his work in earnest, understaffed and with what staff they do have not always being the cream, it is challenging to say the least. But he cracks on. And is doing OK. Until that is he is called to a suspected heart attack crash incident of a patient who had been doing OK, but who subsequently dies, There's an inquest and the fingers start to point his way due to his past...
And so begins the start of a spiral which, well, to be honest I am not going to spoil by saying anything more about. But I will say that this incident opens up a right can of "serial killer in the medical profession" worms... Big juicy worms...
Interestingly though, peppered throughout the narrative, all the way through, the author includes historical accounts of previous medical killers. Some I had heard of, others new to me. Although a tad distracting, I did find these fascinating and did bookmark a few miscreants for further reading!
Obviously being from that world, the author has made the whole "hospital experience" very true to life. I found some of the scenes intriguing and his explanations interesting. I also blooming love the title cos, of course, it's the truth and fits the book perfectly.
Oh and there's also quite a lot of humour to be found in amongst all the shenanigans. Some quite black, but it keeps the book on an even keel.
Characters were great - I took to Doc straight away. Love me a flawed character chasing redemption! But I also had a soft spot for Felix. You'll see why, maybe.
And the ending - didn't see that coming...
All in all, a cracking book which I thoroughly recommend to fans of the genre. My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

A really enjoyable, interesting and pacy crime thriller. I clocked the murderer quite early on, but that didn’t spoil the reveal as it was cleverly done and had other mysteries to be uncovered. Really liked the main character and his flaws were well drawn.

Sometimes People Die is entirely a first person narrative. It is written by an unnamed junior doctor who, to be fair, is unlikely to make anyone’s list of top doctor of the year. Deeply flawed, he struggles by with the bare minimum of medical knowledge and working in St Luke’s, a place of last resort where recruitment is largely drawn from the medical register of ‘who is left who couldn’t get a job anywhere else?’

With a known opiate addiction for which he is undergoing mandatory psychotherapy, our doctor‘s narrative is reminiscent of Adam Kay, but with less anger and more resignation towards the very real difficulties of working in the under-resourced NHS where mistakes are always going to happen and by some miracle they don’t happen nearly as often as they might.

This narrative very much carries the ring of authenticity. It is clear that Simon Stephenson knows whereof he speaks when it comes to the life of a house officer in a hospital. Utilising a somewhat sardonic tone, our unnamed doctor takes us on a tour of the sick and the dying, recounting the saves and the near misses as he goes.

Soon, though, it becomes clear that not all is well in St Luke’s, beyond the obvious lack of resources. Patients are dying of things that they should not die from and the number of patients that are passing without a clear cause is growing.

As he relates this story to his readers, he intersperses his narrative with tales of famous cases of medical murders. From so called Angels of Death to Harold Shipman, we are treated to the most notorious of medical murders over the past several decades.

It all lends additional plausibility to out protagonist’s narrative and serves to add a more chilling tone to his often witty telling of this tale. Unsurprisingly, given his background, it is not long before our doctor becomes a suspect in what evolves into a serial murder enquiry. Though he is interrogated, there’s not really enough evidence to charge him and he returns to work, though the killings do not stop.

Speculation is rife throughout the hospital about what is going on and who might be responsible and the doctors even mock up a murder board in their mess room with their own darkly humorous suggestions.

As our doctor, who is at least improving his medical skills as he learns on the job, begins to investigate who might be responsible his investigations lead him into more trouble and he suffers badly when a housemate fails his exams and falls by the wayside.

I found this to be a fresh and captivating tale, told well and with credibility and conviction. It is a refreshing take on medical murder mysteries and held my attention well throughout. It makes sense that a doctor is best placed to find out what’s going on than the police, whose instincts are always to look for those with flawed pasts.

Verdict: An entertaining, credible and informative medical thriller with a difference. I loved the tone and enjoyed our narrator’s perspective. The conclusion was both fascinating and surprising. I really enjoyed it.

The year is 1999. Returning to practice after a suspension for stealing opioids, a young Scottish doctor takes the only job he can find: a post as a senior house officer in the struggling east London hospital of St Luke's. Amid the malestorm of sick patients , over-worked staff and underfunded wards a darker secret soon declares itself: too many patients are dying.

Simon Stephenson was a physician before he became a writer and screenwriter, In this book is a story of overworked and exhausted medics who face new challenges every day. The unnamed narrator, a doctor who's on probation due to their dependency on opioids, is now working in a busy A&E. He starts to notice inexplicable deaths at the hospital.

The pace is steady but there was a little too much hospital jargon for my liking in the first half of the book. The characters were a little flat, There's a lot of medical murders and murderers. There's historical parts that were quite interesting to read about, they covered doctors who were also killers. I did not see the twist coming.

I would like to thank #NetGalley #HarperCollinsUK #HarperFiction and the author #SimionStephenson for my ARC of #SometimesPeopleDie in exchange for an honest review.

This title caught my eye when a GoodReads friend commented in her review that it had too much medicine in it for her - a big plus for me: I generally love crime thrillers written by real doctors, and the more bleak hippocratic humour the better. Sometimes People Die is like a version of This Is Going To Hurt as written by Gregory House - but without all the objects being retrieved from orifices. This is part memoir - an accurate portrayal of life as a junior hospital doctor in the late nineties NHS, but with a serial killer mystery thrown in to broaden the appeal to lovers of true crime. It is entirely fictional, apart from the inserts about famous murderous medics from across the ages every few chapters - other reviewers have felt these to be an unnecessary distraction from the plot, but I found them fascinating.

The narrator - who’s is never named, recounts how twenty years earlier he found himself working in an understaffed public hospital in the East End of London, after nearly losing his medical licence for stealing pethidine to fuel his opioid addiction in his native Scotland. The work is gruelling - the never ending drudgery of healthcare interspersed with crash calls to cardiac arrests that seem to be happening all too frequently, until finally the question is raised - could a killer be walking the wards? When his past is revealed, our protagonist becomes the lead suspect, but a lack of evidence and the dearth of doctors mean he keeps his job - but the deaths don’t stop. Can he unmask a murderer whose methods are matched only by the vast array of diseases they diagnose daily?

“Our patients were the sickest in the city: they frequently suffered from Victorian ailments, travelled to the farthest corners of the globe to bring home obscure exotic diseases, and sometimes just good old-fashioned shot each other.”

I thoroughly enjoyed this - despite the trauma of a trip down memory lane from having worked in British hospitals myself only a few years before the time it’s set. The writing is brilliant, and the observations astute - only actual doctors know the pressures that distort your thinking to the point where incarceration can seem preferable to going to work: “I found myself inevitably thinking again about what my life in prison might be like. I did not seem likely to do well there, but consoled myself that perhaps I could ingratiate myself to the other inmates by providing them medical care. Beyond that, the sole upside I could think of was that I would at least no longer have to work nights.”

His account of his (minor spoiler alert) relapse into addiction felt scarily believable. Our flawed hero admits he was hopeless medical student, but downplays his clinical skills - his imposter syndrome stops him recognising what his colleagues can see, that does actually deserve his place, and he turns out to be a better detective than the incompetent investigators leading the murder enquiry. “An incorrect diagnosis is like having a pebble in your shoe: you can go a certain distance with it by reassuring yourself that you are simply imagining the unease you feel, but deep down you know it is wrong, and at some point it will need to be addressed.” I can see that a lay reader would find that all the in depth medical details slow down the plot - the book is longer than it needs to be, but I liked the way it’s all wrapped up. Recommended to those who enjoy medical thrillers and don’t currently have a serious disease or a loved one in hospital. 4.5 rounded up.

Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins for the ARC. I am posting this honest review voluntarily. Sometimes People Die is published on September 1st.

Sometimes People Die is less a medical thriller, despite the fact that there are statistically more deaths than expected on the wards of St Luke's, and more a meditation on the life of a young doctor and his struggle with opioid addiction.

It's fascinating reading, though I didn't like the narrative voice particularly. I can't put my finger on why, it's very atmospheric but a lot of the time our unnamed narrator seems a bit robotic. Given that he's strung out on pethidine at times, that's maybe not too surprising!

2.5 rounded up
It’s 1999 and our narrator returns to work after suspension for stealing opioids. He is to leave Scotland and go to work at struggling to recruit St Lukes Hospital in East London. Like most hospitals, it’s understaffed and therefore all are overworked and yes, sometimes people die. However, at St Lukes it seems as if there are way too many deaths, above the average you might expect. A police investigation is launched to try to work out of an ‘Angel of Death’ is stalking the hospital. If so, who, why and how?

The premise is good but unfortunately I don’t know where to start with this novel as in my opinion it’s a game of two halves. I nearly give up on the first half as there’s far too much hospital, way too much medical detail for me and not enough plot which makes me wonder if I’m reading a medical text. It’s a slow, slow plod of a pace and I don’t find it very inspiring. In addition, I have no idea why it’s necessary to include other medical miscreants?? Do we actually need to know the first recorded health care murder for example? It’s AD64 by Greek doctor Xenophon if you’re interested!!!

Just as I consider giving up it starts to get interesting… finally! The pace starts to go above that of a country stroll though it’s never brisk partly because of the narrator's delivery. Suspicions start to fall in several places, there’s a tragedy and some rather good plot twists you do not expect. Unfortunately, you have to be very patient for those to arrive. There is a good premise in here but initially it’s well concealed under a plethora of medical jargon.

Overall, I do seem to be the outlier here so be sure to check other reviews. If you like a lot of medicine with your drama then this is for you!

With thanks to NetGalley and especially to HarperCollins/HarperFiction for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.

A medical thriller that i couldn't put down. It was completely gripping and it contained informstion about medical practitioners that have caused harm to patients throughout the years, which was interesting but a bit confusing at first, which is until an unexplained death occurs in the story.
An incredible read that was perfectly paced and completely compelling

A wonderfully addictive medical thriller. I wasn’t quite sure where the story was heading when I first began reading. The nameless narrator is a disgraced junior doctor heading for a new job in an East London hospital. There follows his search for accommodation and efforts to acclimatise himself to new colleagues and fit into his new life. Then interspersed in to the narrative are vignettes of healthcare killers both from history and more recent times. These I found very interesting and it wasn’t long before an unexplained death loomed on the horizon. The story is fast paced, the characters so likeable and believable, especially George, the plot so credible that I could not stop reading. The life of a junior doctor is not glamourised- hard work, long hours difficult patients and the narrator’s flawed character adds to the verisimilitude of the story as does the medical detail. Tension builds superbly as a police investigation and media interest incite public interest. The story is told with a dry humour that is amusing but does not detract from the seriousness of the situation nor does it trivialise life and death.
The ending was very clever although I found it a wee bit unsatisfactory but that did not detract from my enjoyment of the book.

Thank you to Harper Collins and Netgalley for an ARC.