Sometimes People Die

After opioid addiction costs the unnamed 29-year-old narrator of this enjoyable if uneven novel from Stephenson (Set My Heart to Five) his job in a Scottish hospital, he finds work at the desperate, understaffed St. Luke’s in London, where he struggles to cope with the onslaught of poverty-stricken patients with “Victorian ailments” and “obscure exotic diseases.” When an older patient dies unexpectedly, her barrister daughter’s questions prompt a police investigation, which shows an alarming number of unexpected deaths at St. Luke’s. The narrator, hauled in for questioning, worries that he’s going to be arrested as suspicious deaths continue with no clear pattern of victim or method. When his roommate, an affable orthopedic surgeon, dies by suicide in the hospital parking lot, the narrator relapses. The police arrest a suspect, and the novel’s tone shifts from dread to suspense as the narrator turns amateur sleuth when the facts don’t seem to add up. Stephenson’s sardonic wit and the farce of hapless, overconfident police work prop up the meandering, overlong plot. Most readers will wish the novel cut to the chase a bit more. Stephenson has done better. Agent: Mollie Glick, Creative Artists. (Sept.)