Last Patient of the Night

The medical thriller genre is a subgenre within the broader thriller genre that combines the typical thriller elements of suspense and mystery with plotlines focused on deadly outbreaks, morality issues, or systemic corruption that occur within a medical setting or with main characters who work in the medical field. Medical thrillers allow authors to explore the realistic components of the actual medical field alongside more fantastical and mysterious characteristics common in fiction writing.

The medical thriller subgenre can trace its heritage all the way back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which focuses on a scientist’s attempts to create life through medical experimentation. Since then, the genre has exploded in popularity. Notable examples include Coma by Robin Cook, The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton, and The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. Medical thrillers are also popular in television and film, including Flatliners, Shutter Island, and Contagion. Grey’s Anatomy, a show running for over 20 seasons, blends the medical thriller and soap opera genres, while The Pitt, a newer Emmy-winning series, focuses on the high-stakes and fast-paced day in the emergency department of a big city hospital.

The AJ Docker series clearly falls into the medical thriller genre, and The Last Patient of the Night adheres to many key tropes. The protagonist of the series is AJ Docker, or Doc, a doctor who goes rogue to investigate the brutal murder of one of his patients. Though Doc is an ER doctor by day, he spends his non-working hours investigating against the police’s wishes, demonstrating his occasionally cavalier attitude towards rules and laws, which is a typical trait in medical thriller protagonists. Doc is investigating a mystery that begins in his ER with the death of a patient. Though the mystery he uncovers is not medical in nature, Jenny’s death in the ER jumpstarts Doc’s investigation. Doc’s secondary investigation, which runs parallel to the primary investigation, focuses on uncovering billing fraud within the hospital, demonstrating Gerlacher’s exploration of financial corruption within the American medical field.

Gerlacher is a pediatric emergency physician, having worked for over 30 years in the field. Gerlacher pulls from his own pool of knowledge to lend credence to Doc’s medical capabilities and expertise, from Doc performing an emergency tracheotomy to Doc using his medical know-how to headbutt and fracture the chief antagonist’s skull. Gerlacher is not the only prominent doctor-turned-author: Freida McFadden is a neurosurgeon who is the author of over 25 novels, including Ward D, a medical thriller.