The best medical thriller books of the 21st Century range from conspiracies about terrifying places where shocking research is carried out, to period pieces about the horrors of mental institutions. Elsewhere, technology threatens to take something that seems like a cure and turn it into something positively lethal. Fertility treatments are invented to save humanity, only to go horribly awry.
And don’t forget what may be the most common theme in this genre: the evil done by big pharma.
Before we dig in, why do we even read medical thrillers?
After all, depending on what pandemic or plague is going around, it can seem at times like we’re all living in our own medical nightmare.
Maybe that’s why a truly great medical thriller book, one that enables us to escape to a world where the worst case scenario is worse than our own, can can be oddly therapeutic.
Over the past decade, we’ve had the pleasure of reading lot of great medical thriller books.
Some our staff favorites became best sellers, while others have remained under the radar.
Included among the represented authors are real-life medical doctors, scientists, first-time novelists who are passionate about government corruption, and one of the most legendary writers of our time.
Without further ado, here’s our list of the best medical thrillers of this century.
The Institute by Stephen King
This medical-and-psychic thriller ranks among King’s best.
Stephen King’s latest thriller The Institute is in no way a sequel to Dr. Sleep (which itself was a sequel to The Shining), but thematically speaking, it’s a close cousin.
As in Dr. Sleep, villains with terrifying psychic powers are hell bent on leveraging the powers of gifted children.
In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes.
Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents—telekinesis and telepathy—who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon.
They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” Kalisha says. “You check in, but you don’t check out.”
In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts.
There are no scruples here.
If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal.
As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help.
But no one has ever escaped.
Brave readers will not be disappointed.
The Achilles Gene by N.E. Miller
The discovery of the Achilles gene by Ahmad Sharif at the Middle East Centre for Cancer and AIDS Research (MECCAR), recently opened in Jordan’s remote Wadi Rum desert, had stunned Western scientists.
Each gene having the potential to destroy its own cell should it ever become cancerous, the discovery had promised a universal cure for the disease.
But there was a hitch.
Although every one of our cells has the gene, only those of a unique Bedouin tribe have the extra piece of DNA needed to turn it on.
Dr Stephen Salomon of the US National Cancer Institute claims to have invented such a switch, for which he will soon receive the Nobel Prize.
But maverick Oxford don Giles Butterfield suspects his American friend’s invention might be fraudulent.
After a sleepless night in his office in Magdalen College, he sets off for Heathrow in search of the truth.
When his young assistant Fiona Cameron unexpectedly joins him in Washington, it is the start of a globetrotting adventure the outcome of which exceeds their wildest expectations, presenting Giles with a dilemma of epic proportions.
The real heft of this thriller is the scientific detail borne of author N.E. Miller’s professional background, which infuses the story with a verisimilitude born out of his own storied career as a medical scientist and geneticist best known for discovering the link between “good” cholesterol and protection against heart disease. His first article became the most cited paper in the almost 200-year history of The Lancet.
He began writing mystery thrillers while a Visiting Fellow and Waynflete Lecturer at Oxford University’s Magdalen College, tasked with delivering a series of public lectures on medical science and is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Medicine and Royal Society of Arts. This scholarship is deeply infused throughout the novel.
The Beauty Doctor by Elizabeth Hutchison Bernard
Straightening noses, trimming eyelids, lifting jowls. In the year 1907, Dr. Rome’s revolutionary beauty surgery is considered daring, perhaps dangerous.
Still, women want what he promises.
His young assistant, Abigail Platford, is hardly immune to Dr. Rome’s persuasive charm. Abigail once dreamed of becoming a doctor, though of a much different sort.
That dream ended with her father’s tragic death from a medical error for which she holds herself responsible.
But Dr. Rome, who proudly displays his medical degree from Johns Hopkins, seems to believe in her.
If he were willing to act as her mentor, might there still be a chance to fulfill her dream of someday becoming a doctor serving New York City’s poor?
But something feels terribly wrong, as though an insidious evil is closing in. Broken promises, lies, and intrigues abound.
The powerful are threatening to destroy the weak, and a doctor’s sacred duty hangs in the balance.
Abigail no longer knows who to believe; but with Dr. Rome now her mentor and her lover, she desperately wants to trust him.
Did we mention the novel is also an award-winning Historical Thriller?
Bernard excels at using vivid imagery to bring the Edwardian era to life, and creates suspense by putting Abigail into a series of realistic scenarios in which she has to make impossibly difficult choices.
Yellow Death by Alex Lettau
An irresistible medical thriller with the urgency of Contagion and the gritty conspiratorial intrigue of Narcos. One of the year’s best thrillers.
When two cases of fatal hepatitis C are reported in a small town, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) sends medical detective Dr. Kris Jensen to Mississippi to investigate. Both victims were junkies. A fatal hep C cluster is almost unheard of, and Dr. Jensen becomes convinced that a previously unknown virus is responsible for the deaths.
And what could be worse than an outbreak of an unknown disease?
Losing the expert charged with the investigation. While drawing heart blood from a corpse, Dr. Jensen is accidentally stuck with a needle and infected with the fatal mystery disease.
Author Alex Lettau, the pen name of an American infectious disease specialist, sets the hook deep and early with a series of fast-paced early chapters that would translate well to the big screen.
Lettau frames Dr. Jensen with a truly unique conundrum: does she tell anyone she’s infected? If she does, she would surely get pulled off the investigation into the outbreak, which could lessen the probability of finding answers to the virus’ origin.
After heading to New Orleans in search of a “sparkly” new heroin that could be the cause, she uncovers a conspiracy set in motion by another federal agency.
The futility of the war on narcotic drugs, and the blowback by heavy-handed American tactics, has rarely been more smartly illustrated.
The entirety of the investigation feels authentic, from the motivations of shadowy DEA agents down to the sketchy lab test results.
Just as the stakes seem as high as they could possibly get, Lettau raises them again: when Dr. Jensen travels to the Venezuelan jungle to investigate the origin of the virus, she finds that her infection isn’t the only thing threatening her life.
The Forever Game by Jeffrey James Higgins
DEA Special Agent Adam Locke is a series-worthy action hero whose debut is filled with breathtaking action and a surprisingly exquisite exploration of AI-assisted immortality.
The Forever Game opens as DEA Special Agent Adam Locke is in Haiti, closing in on John Laguerre, the leader of a massive transnational criminal organization. He figures they’ve got just one chance to “cut the head off the snake.” After an exhilarating infiltration into Laguerre’s compound, they manage to take him alive.
Locke may be a legend within the DEA, but he soon gives it all up to take care of his dying girlfriend, Effie. To stay close to home while covering expenses, he agrees to take a job at his brother Tommy’s company, Forever Technology. What started as research to understand and access memory in damaged brain tissue is an AI-powered effort to extend human life.
As author Jeffrey James Higgins soon reveals, the problem with Forever Technology is that people may be willing to kill to get their hands on it. After a scientist dies under suspicious circumstances and Tommy dies in an explosion, Adam finds himself on the suspect list while trying to find the killers.
Higgins, author of Furious and Unseen, bolsters his reputation for high-stakes, no-frills drama with this taut thriller. There isn’t an ounce of fat on Higgins’ prose. Nearly every line of dialogue is a gut punch, and yet he can make a landscape come alive with a single high-impact sentence (“The pier was a mishmash of pulleys and taught metal lines, and it smelled of diesel fumes and saltwater.”)
Whether Forever Technology can save Effie is at the forefront of the plot, but Locke is so likable, and so on the ropes, that his day-to-day fight for survival is what makes this a page-turner. There’s no indication yet that Higgins is planning a series, but we would love to see one centered around Locke. As it stands, what separates Locke from the Jack Reachers of the literary landscape is his hearty, seemingly natural exploration into deeper themes. In this case, it’s nothing less than the future of immortality.
The Goldilocks Genome by Elizabeth Reed Aden
The Goldilocks Genome’s winning formula is its inclusion of actual current psychiatric practices, science and pharmacology, which sets the tone for a wholly believable thriller you can’t put down.
When San Francisco–based FDA epidemiologist Dr. Carrie Hediger uncovers a rash of unexplained deaths while investigating the suspiciously convenient demise of her best friend, she becomes determined to find answers.
Her path may lead to a murderer.
And even if it doesn’t, it may lead to professional ruin.
To unravel the puzzle, Carrie assembles a team: some talented post-doctoral fellows, a quirky pharmacologist, an unctuous chemist, and a skeptical FBI agent that she can’t help her attraction for.
Together, they follow the data through the twists and turns, eventually uncovering that the Goldilocks effect in prescription drugs—the premise that people are inclined to seek “just the right amount” of something—is central to understanding these mysterious deaths.
Through the twists and turns, Carrie and her team enter a race to uncover the truth and catch a killer.
Silent Source by James Marshall Smith
A first-rate medical thriller that established new author James Marshall Smith as one of the most exciting new voices in the genre.
Among local law enforcement, scientist Damon Keane is something of a celebrity in Atlanta. So when Atlanta police’s Special Operations Section find themselves faced with three ghoulish deaths and no solid leads, the mayor himself finds Dr. Keane – who is volunteering at a camp for wayward teens – and cajoles him into joining the effort.
As Keane reluctantly returns to Atlanta, more victims emerge. He suspects radiation poisoning, but after a full battery of tests, there’s no trace of polonium-210, thallium or any other bacteria or virus. Still, Keane is convinced that these people have been murdered. But how?
Riding along with Keane as he discovers the answer to that question is pure joy. In a genre full of eccentric detectives and narrative gimmicks, author James Marshall Smith distinguishes Keane with the plausible investigative processes he employs to get his answers. All Keane needs is a worthy adversary, and Smith gives him an exceptional one in a technician at a local oncology center that turns out to be far more than he seems. The ensuing race against the clock spirals into a breathtaking and readily believable global manhunt.
Smith, founding chief of the radiation studies branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), obviously brings a wealth of knowledge to the subject, but he never lets the story get so bogged down in the details that it ceases to entertain. It’s not going too far to say that every note rings true. If you like medical thrillers based upon actual science, put Silent Source at the top of your reading queue.
The First Conception by Nesley Clerge
The author of the addictive Amazon #1 bestselling psychological thriller The Anatomy of Cheating shows his narrative range in The First Conception: The Rise of Eris. In an alternate reality, a genetically engineered blight has caused most of humanity to become infertile. As in vitro techniques fail, the human race faces inevitable extinction.
The fear of mass infertility has been a common sci-fi theme over the past few decades, including P. D. James’ novel The Children of Men, Margaret Atwoods’ The Handmaid’s Tale and the upcoming The Completionist by Siobhan Adcock. With The First Conception, author Nesly Clerge has written a worthy entry into the canon.
But unlike Atwood, James or Adcock, the cause of infertility isn’t caused by an environmental disaster, but rather, by a powerful team of women who have had enough of male dominance and sexual abuse.
The book focuses on traumatized molecular biologist Dr. Katherine Eris Barnes, the child of a poor single mother with a dizzying array of abusive lovers.
Clerge’s depiction of Barnes’ home life is remarkable for its psychological and physical brutality, but the result is a smart, imaginative revenge fantasy wrapped in a terrifying medical thriller.
While Barnes cops to her plot to destroy humanity in the very first chapter, discovering how she does it – and why – is well worth the journey.
Book clubs will surely argue over whether her actions are fully justified, but there’s no denying the timing of this book in the social zeitgeist.
If The First Conception had been written by a woman, some would surely call it the ultimate #metoo thriller. But in Clerge’s capable hands, it’s still an excellent start to a promising trilogy. Bravo.
The Madhouse by Lawrence Matrick, M.D.
The Madhouse is the story of New Orleans native Alex Gage, who struggles out of poverty to become not only a respected psychiatrist, but also an aspiring reformist. The story begins in the deep south as Alex is born with a clubfoot that keeps him from being drafted (it would be surgically repaired later in life). Despite his ascension to higher learning, he finds himself working as a physician in a Canadian mental institution – a nightmarish shop of horrors that would make Dante reconsider his definition of hell.
Alex’s colleague, Dr. Aaron Levy, a former Italian mafia thug, spends his time sexually assaulting the nurses, plying them with cocaine and morphine, abusing his patients, and talking about himself in the third person (“Aaron is poorly prepared.”)
Alex’s life takes a turn for the worse when he stupidly confides in Aaron, telling him about a deadly encounter with a man his mother knew back home. Shortly afterwards, Aaron begins blackmailing him, repeatedly requesting that he break the law in exchange for his silence. It’s a brilliant twist that instantly raises the book’s already sky-high stakes.
Alex’s girlfriend, Monique, organizes the women to march and force the early changes to the primitive abortion laws in the country. The nuns, the female ward supervisors, Rani, an East Indian female doctor, and the female nurses endeavor to help Alex change the oppressive attitudes towards the institutionalized orphaned children, the aboriginals, the mentally deficient and intellectually deprived patients. Working together, will they be able to change the course of treatment as to prefrontal lobotomies, and to abolish illegal female sterilization?
Author Lawrence Matrick, M.D. has drawn an extremely evocative world where danger lurks around every corner, especially where medicine is practiced. But The Madhouse is more than just a gritty crime thriller. Matrick, himself a former psychiatrist with experience as a mental hospital resident, employs the medical practices of 20th-century psychiatry to terrifying effect. Note that The Madhouse is not for the faint of heart. The book is chock full of bone-chilling afflictions and remedies, ranging from venereal disease to lobotomies and shock therapy, and Matrick includes them without ever seeming gratuitous. As an added bonus, Matrick has added an epilogue detailing a brief history of the evolution of mental institutions.
The Algorithm Will See You Now by JL Lycette
A truly important medical thriller about the role of AI in life-or-death decision-making.
In the tradition of Robert Harris’ classic thriller The Fear Index, and Arthur C. Clark’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, JL Lycette’s novel about the perils of flawed, uncontrollable artificial intelligence is an emotionally-charged, cautionary tale about the role of technology in modern medicine.
Chief Resident Hope Kestrel, a Seattle surgeon working in the PRIMA (Prognostic Intelligent Medical Algorithms) program, couldn’t be more personally or professionally invested in her mission. PRIMA promises to free patients and doctors from painstaking choices about courses of treatment. “The algorithms are more trustworthy than people,” she tells her skeptical lab intern, Jacie Stone.
Professionally, Hope is committed to doing whatever it takes to maintain her top ranking within the program. Doing so will mean a prestigious faculty position with her own research lab. Personally, Hope has a curiously strong relationship with her mentor, Cecilia, who she fears disappointing, and success would mean spending more time with her.
And perhaps most importantly, Hope’s own mother died of cancer after an agonizing and unsuccessful treatment. She harbors a great deal of resentment and regret over how much she suffered despite the fact that there was no chance of a cure. The constant reminders surfaced in her day-to-day work make objectivity about PRIMA’s effectiveness – and just how much decision-making power it should be given – extremely daunting.
Lycette, herself a real-life physician, creates spectacular tension between Hope, Jacie and program director Dr. Marah Maddox. In Maddox, Lycette has created a workplace monster that somehow manages to be even scarier than the prospect of fully autonomous AI. Thanks to Lycette’s meticulous observations, everything about Maddox, from her perfume to her cryptic threats, seems truly sinister. And that’s before she reveals what the powerful researcher is really up to.
While Lycette’s novel about the threat of generational AI could not be more timely, the story’s realistic portrait of the humans seeking to control it is what makes it memorable.
Blood Red Mist by Michael Allan Scott
In Michael Allan Scott’s second Jena Halpern series book, the formidable psychic boards a plane to Washington, D.C., where her terminally ill stepfather is hospitalized in nearby Silver Springs Silver Spring. The trip is a powder keg of emotion, as the two haven’t spoken in years. At one time in the distant past, the two came perilously close to having an affair.
En route to the hospital, Jena instructs the Uber driver to change course and take her to the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. She’s not entirely sure why – it’s just a strong feeling. In alternate chapters told from the point of view of FDA Director Thomas A. Friedman, M.D., we gradually understand that Jena is right. Something is very wrong at the FDA. In exchange for ten million dollars and a trip to the Cayman Islands, Friedman is willing to approve a dangerous new antidepressant. But before that can happen, his contact goes missing.
Is there a connection between Jena’s stepfather’s lymphoma and whatever is happening at the FDA?
Blood-Red Mist finds Jena Halpern trusting her intuition and very real extrasensory powers. At the same time, she realizes that she is extremely vulnerable – the powerful physical effects of her visions have actually hospitalized her in the past. She must somehow learn to control them, and this inner struggle is one of the most compelling stories in fiction today.
Aside from Scott’s jaw-dropping character development, he has created a wholly believable medical thriller that is rooted in reality. Blood-Red Mist comes at a time when accusations about FDA corruption appears to be at an all-time high, and the consequences of big pharma’s seemingly unchecked power is terrifying. .
The Deadly Deal by J. Lee
The Deadly Deal is the story of an ordinary man whose life is suddenly turned upside down by a vast conspiracy he can scarcely comprehend.
As the novel begins, Pharma exec David Centrelli is under pressure to deliver a major deal that the company’s CEO and its investors are personally counting on.
The consequences of not coming through could mean the end of his career at the firm. The young hotshot seems confident, but is still humble enough to feel like he’s sitting at the big boys’ table.
Just two hours later, the must-win deal is the very last thing on his mind. After learning that his best friend and his wife are dead – apparently victims of an apartment fire – he tells his employer that he needs to take time off.
But he’ll have no time to grieve. Shortly afterwards, Anne Halavity, whom David has never seen in his life, forces him to go with her at gunpoint. And once they’re alone, Anna reveals a bombshell: his friends didn’t die in a fire. And it wasn’t by accident.
That’s just the start of David’s troubles. What comes next is a blistering tangle of blackmail and threats. Meanwhile, the CEO at David’s company is being muscled by some corporate gangsters. For reasons not yet clear to him, they want David dead.
The Happy Chip by Dennis Meredith
Human beings have used mood-altering drugs – ranging from roots to prescription drugs – for thousands of years. Author Dennis Meredith’s The Happy Chip takes the idea a step further by imagining a world in which an implanted nanochip measures and regulates the hormones that help determine happiness.
Chippers, as they are called, don’t just feel better. They also appear to make better choices, leading to financial stability, improved relationships and better dietary choices. But soon after science writer Brad Davis heads to NeoHappy, Inc’s headquarters to write a biography of wealthy chip inventor Mary Fallon, he learns of a string of murders related to a new nanochip. Is NeoHappy – or even Fallon himself – using the chip to control humanity?
Credit Meredith, author of the excellent Cerulean’s Secret and Wormholes, for devising his most timely novel yet. In an age when technologies such as the iPhone, social media apps and the FitBit have been embraced by billions despite significant privacy tradeoffs, Meredith brilliantly assesses the risks of the next inevitable step
(reports that DARPA is developing a similarly mood-altering nanochip have been rampant in recent years).
Is the nightmare he portrays really all that far-fetched? The fact that such biotech seems within reach even now makes this expertly paced novel all the more urgent.
In Brad, Meredith has found an exemplary vehicle for channeling our hopes, dreams and fears about biotech.
Readers will be hooked form the get go, and by the time the last page is read, fans of Douglas E. Richards and A.G. Riddle may find a new favorite author.