By the author of A Year in the Merde and 1000 Years of Annoying the French.
A medical crime comedy that starts with one body, before an epidemic of unexplained deaths breaks out. And it's all told by the least reliable narrator imaginable, the fatally naive Bernie Bridges, who dodges between a glamorous government minister, a depressed female police inspector, a Napoleon-complexed financial director and a deadly French model as he tells us how he's going to privatise the Health Service - while avoiding the corpses and accusations flying all around him.
Coma, the company that Bernie helped to create, began as a medical students' online community, but has since evolved into an agency that puts doctors (even those that have been struck off) in touch with employers, and patients and hospitals in touch with affordable medical practitioners ("surgeons might not speak English, but the patients will be under anaesthetic, so who needs conversation?"). Dubiously sourced medicines, and even vital organs, are also available via Coma ("kidney for sale, hardly used, one careful previous owner").
The novel begins as Coma is to be bought out by a pharmaceuticals multinational called Nostrum. All of Coma's founders, including Bernie, are about to get very rich.
Bernie rushes to share his joy and astonishment with his colleague and closest friend, Beano. Sadly, he finds Beano lying dead, apparently strangled after a violent struggle ... And the novel immediately becomes a race against time, against corruption, against sudden death, and incidentally against affordable, universal health care.
Death Goes Viral is a knockabout comedy, but it is also a serious novel about the flawed notion that the internet has created true democracy; it depicts a government using fake news and false promises to manipulate public opinion, and a massive corporation trying to get a stranglehold on the planet's health.
It is about trying to distinguish, in a world where everyone communicates to everyone else all the time, between your "friends" and your friends.
Genre: Mystery
A medical crime comedy that starts with one body, before an epidemic of unexplained deaths breaks out. And it's all told by the least reliable narrator imaginable, the fatally naive Bernie Bridges, who dodges between a glamorous government minister, a depressed female police inspector, a Napoleon-complexed financial director and a deadly French model as he tells us how he's going to privatise the Health Service - while avoiding the corpses and accusations flying all around him.
Coma, the company that Bernie helped to create, began as a medical students' online community, but has since evolved into an agency that puts doctors (even those that have been struck off) in touch with employers, and patients and hospitals in touch with affordable medical practitioners ("surgeons might not speak English, but the patients will be under anaesthetic, so who needs conversation?"). Dubiously sourced medicines, and even vital organs, are also available via Coma ("kidney for sale, hardly used, one careful previous owner").
The novel begins as Coma is to be bought out by a pharmaceuticals multinational called Nostrum. All of Coma's founders, including Bernie, are about to get very rich.
Bernie rushes to share his joy and astonishment with his colleague and closest friend, Beano. Sadly, he finds Beano lying dead, apparently strangled after a violent struggle ... And the novel immediately becomes a race against time, against corruption, against sudden death, and incidentally against affordable, universal health care.
Death Goes Viral is a knockabout comedy, but it is also a serious novel about the flawed notion that the internet has created true democracy; it depicts a government using fake news and false promises to manipulate public opinion, and a massive corporation trying to get a stranglehold on the planet's health.
It is about trying to distinguish, in a world where everyone communicates to everyone else all the time, between your "friends" and your friends.
Genre: Mystery
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