Chronicled through a series of online posts, psychiatrist Parker H. gives us an account of his time working in a New England hospital. His patient is a forty-year-old man who has been at the hospital since he was six years old. Unclassifiable, with symptoms that change over time, everyone who has tried to help the patient has been driven insane or commited suicide.
Under strict confinement, with minimal contact with the staff as a safety precaution, the hospital directors live in constant fear, worried the patient’s release could be catastrophic. But Parker is brilliant and ambitious, and decides he will be the one that finally cures the patient.
From their very first meeting, things spin dangerously out of control, forcing Parker to question everything he knows and fear for all he cares about.
Why we’re excited about this book:
Jasper DeWitt hails from New England but now lives on the West Coast. The Patient is his debut novel, which comes from The Patient That Nearly Drove Me Out of Medicine, which won NoSleep’s Best Original Monster award in 2015. DeWitt is an avid NoSleep contributor, with several stories online at the subreddit. Using the online forum as a storytelling tool, DeWitt provides a chilling account of an ambitious doctor facing unfathomable evil that threatens himself and everyone he cares about. Brian Keene (The Rising, Ghoul) says: “A stunning debut! DeWitt’s The Patient is a thrilling, compulsive page-turner that will appeal to fans of F. Paul Wilson, Sarah Pinborough, and Alex Michaelides.”
Forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 7 July 2020, The Patient by Jasper DeWitt is available for pre-order now.
BOB PASTORELLA