Riot Recommendation

15 of Your Favorite Medical Thrillers

Vanessa Diaz

Managing Editor

Book Riot Managing Editor Vanessa Diaz is a writer and former bookseller from San Diego, CA whose Spanish is even faster than her English. When not reading or writing, she enjoys dreaming up travel itineraries and drinking entirely too much tea. She is a regular co-host on the All the Books podcast who especially loves mysteries, gothic lit, mythology/folklore, and all things witchy. Vanessa can be found on Instagram at @BuenosDiazSD or taking pictures of pretty trees in Portland, OR, where she now resides.

This Riot Recommendation of favorite medical thrillers is sponsored by Dark Pattern by Andrew Mayne.

How can he catch a killer when his own mind is playing tricks? Dr. Theo Cray had a knack for catching serial killers until a mind-altering pathogen knocked him off his game. Luckily, his former professor is helping him track down his latest suspect: a nomadic health-care worker with hundreds of victims. Cray follows each new lead, but with his own grip on reality slipping away, he knows that he’ll find what he’s hunting only if he confronts his own dark side. The Naturalist series by Andrew Mayne continues with a twisted new psychological thriller. Read Dark Pattern.


We love twisty thrillers and juicy medical dramas; combine the two and we’ve got our fall reading plans set! That’s why asked you for your favorite medical thrillers. We’re very excited to go on a medical thrill ride that isn’t just us looking up our symptoms on WebMD. Without further ado: your favorite medical thrillers!

The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton

Body of Evidence by Patricia Cornwell

Coma by Robin Cook

Die Again by Tess Gerritsen

Doing Harm by Kelly Parsons

The End of Miracles by Monica Starkman

Expose by Danielle Girard

The Fifth Vial by Michael Palmer

A Girl In Traffick by Mamta Jain Valderrama

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston

The Line Between by Tosca Lee

Ode to Kirihito by Osamu Tezuka, translated by Camellia Nieh

The Poisoner’s Handbook by Deborah Blum

Saving Meghan by J D Palmer

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides