I’m going to shy away from starting this post by calling medical workers heroes—the term “hero,” in this pandemic, is often code for “expendable.” But doctors, nurses, and medical workers are our lifeline, and quite simply, without them (and other essential workers) society as we know it would collapse. If you weren’t already astonished at their capabilities in the current situation, then prepare to be astounded: many of these doctors are also crime writers. Perhaps if you graduate medical school, then save a bunch of lives, writing a mystery series seems downright easy in comparison. Or maybe, the skills of a doctor—attention to detail, the detective work of diagnostics, the narrative of sickness, followed by recovery—simply mesh well with the talents required to craft an excellent detective novel or two (or five, or ten).
When I began to gather names for a list of crime authors who also worked in the medical professions, I quickly realized I’d have to limit it to doctors just to make sure the list didn’t go on for days. I also discovered a long history of doctors writing crime, starting with Sir Conan Doyle himself. To make the list digestible, I decided to limit it to just ten names. Below, you’ll find brief introductions to the work of 10 iconic crime writers who are equally as skilled with a scalpel and stethoscope as with a pen.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Conan Doyle is, of course, the ur-physician of detective writing; his keen observational talents, honed by his medical apprenticeship with one of the finest diagnosticians of the 19th century, informed his creation of the ever-observant Sherlock Holmes, as well as setting the template for Holmes’ peculiar form of deductive reasoning. Doyle worked as a doctor for a number of years before turning to full-time writing, although he would also, on occasion, solve real-life mysteries by request.
Josephine Bell
Josephine Bell is one of those figures that brings to mind Ginger Rogers’ “backwards and in high heels” quote, although Bell was most likely striding forwards in sensible loafers. Born in 1897, she had a long career in the health care industry, and her tenure as a detective novelist lasted nearly as long. She began writing mysteries in the mid-1930s, and ran a medical practice with her husband for years, later branching out to work in hospital management for decades. She was an active member of the crime writing community, helping to found the Crime Writer’s Association and serving as chair in 1959-1961.
Kwei Quartey
Retired from his career as a physician, Ghanaian-American author Kwei Quartey now dedicates his full time to crafting the critically acclaimed Darko Dawson series, featuring a police detective solving crimes that each tie into the complex and fascinating world of Ghana today. He recently launched the Emma Djan series, which follows a young police trainee-turned-private investigator. First introduced in this year’s The Missing American, which delves into the bizarre world of online romance and money-making internet schemes, Emma will soon return in next year’s Sleep Well, My Lady, wherein Djan is tasked with investigating the murder of an heiress to a fashion empire, blamed on a chauffeur but more likely to have been committed by her popular talk show host of a fiance.
Lydia Kang
Lydia Kang does it all—she writes young adult, historical fiction, and has even authored a nonfiction work on medical quackery! She did a residency at Bellevue, so you know she’s legit, and when she’s not practicing medicine or writing, she’s always ready to advise her fellow writers about medical details to make sure the genre gets the facts right. Her latest book is Opium & Absinthe, set in 1899. Just after the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a woman is found dead with two small puncture wounds in her neck. Her sister sets out to find the truth—was her sibling murdered? And could she have been killed by the impossible, a vampire?
Daniel Kalla
Daniel Kalla is a practicing emergency physician in Canada. When he’s not dispensing affordable health care to the Canadian masses, he’s writing prolifically; Kalla is the author of 10 novels, including science fiction and plenty of medical thrillers. Daniel Kalla has long been concerned with rising addiction to opiates, and this year has written of the intersecting Covid Pandemic and the Opioird Epidemic. His latest novel, The Last High, follows an emergency room physician as he searches the streets of Vancouver to identify the source of a new, and deadly, drug.
Tess Gerritsen
Tess Gerritsen worked as a doctor in a Honolulu hospital before beginning her hugely successful career writing the Detective Jane Rizzoli series, which has since been adapted into the TV show Rizzoli and Isles. She’s also the author of a screenplay later ripped off as the film Gravity—read more about her copyright battles with Hollywood here. Her latest novel, The Shape of Night, is a stand-alone thriller set in Maine, where a woman fleeing a dark past ends up in a gothic nightmare.
Alexia Gordon
Alexia Gordon is another one of those superhuman figures who manages to balance her career as a physician with her devotion to writing—her website’s tagline is “Physician by day, #ownvoices crime writer by night,” which leaves me wondering, when does she sleep? She is the author of a series featuring classical musician and amateur sleuth Gethsemane Brown. In the most recent installment, Gethsemane heads to a wedding only to find guests dropping dead all around her, and must get to the bottom of the mysterious murders while in the midst of wedding-induced chaos.
Robin Cook
Trained as a doctor and with a long career running a lab, Robin Cook has been credited with introducing the “medical” into the mystery/thriller genre, and his vast oeuvre backs this up. Cook is fascinated by medical ethics and public policy, and most of his now 37 thrillers have explored the push and pull of scientific progress and public health. His latest novel, Genesis, is a medical thriller and puzzle mystery. When a pregnant social worker is found dead, a medical examiner can find no apparent cause of death, so she enlists the help of a resident with a specialty in genetics to trace the baby’s father. The resident, too, ends up dead, and the medical examiner is convinced the two are connected.
Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton got all the way to a medical residency before deciding that practicing medicine wasn’t for him and devoted himself to a writing career instead. His interest in biology popped in many of his later works, including several nonfiction books grounded his experiences studying medicine. Crichton died in 2008, but his legacy lives on in his enormously popular thrillers, of which three were published posthumously after other authors stepped in to finish them.
Ian K. Smith
Dr. Ian K. Smith is another author who’s as prolific as he is talented. He’s also a celebrity, having appeared on TV on numerous shows and news segments. When he’s not helping us all stay healthy, he’s writing nonfiction aimed at popular audiences to help people take control of fitness and health, and he’s also the author of one mystery novel already published (The Ancient Nine), as well as The Unspoken, an upcoming mystery novel out in October that’s set to be the start of a new private detective series set in Chicago.
