It’s Thanksgiving weekend and the worst blizzard of the season. In the course of a single overnight shift at Northern Michigan General Hospital, patients across various wards are unexpectedly dying. All night, orthopaedic surgeon Dr Rylan Fraser and psychiatrist Dr Paul Bennett (on his first night at this hospital) both get mysterious pagers ordering them to rooms all over the hospital. It’s always too late, as by the time they arrive, the patient in that room is dead. It appears that someone is randomly killing people and toying with the two doctors. Throw in an escaped psychiatric patient, an angry janitor with a grudge, and a beast of a man nicknamed Pockface, and this hospital is one of the least safe places for anyone to be. Can Rylan and Paul figure out what’s really going on before one of them becomes the final victim of the night? Read Call Game by Graham Elder and Laura Cody to find out.

Hospitals are excellent settings for thrillers, as there are usually lots of dead bodies and too many potential villains. The reader will flip between all of them before the shock ending leaves them blindsided. The third-person narrative moves alternatively between Rylan and Paul, with an occasional chapter given to a supporting character. The pace of Call Game is fast; it doesn’t let up until the final page. My tip: pay close attention to everything that happens; nothing in the story is there as filler. Graham Elder and Laura Cody have partnered up to provide a high-stakes medical thriller that will leave the reader breathless. I’m definitely keen to read more from these two.

In Call Game by Graham Elder and Laura Cody, Dr. Rylan Fraser had a patient in the trauma bay after the patient was involved in a major motorcycle accident. Rylan knew she was not allowed to operate on this patient alone, but she had no choice. There were no staff members to help Rylan with the procedure, and her supervising surgeon was stuck in a blizzard. Dr. Paul Bennet, the on-call psychiatrist, was new to the hospital, and Rylan showed him around. Every time Rylan was paged to see a patient urgently, the patient had already died. The patient’s vitals were strong one moment, and the next moment, the patient was found with no vitals. Paul was also paged every time, and it did not make sense that Paul, a psychiatrist, was paged. Rylan found it strange that healthy patients just died and so she called 911.

Call Game by Graham Elder and Laura Cody was an excellent medical thriller. The plot was fast-paced, and so much was happening that I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. The twists and turns had me guessing what would happen next, and I was always wrong. The events were described in detail, and it was easy to lose myself in the story. The characters were realistic, and I could relate to them. Rylan appeared very calm despite everything that was happening around her. The story was brilliantly written and drew me into the plot from the first page. The book was so interesting that I could not turn the pages quickly enough. The ending completely knocked me out of my seat, and it was totally unexpected.