Gary's Essay in Crimereads

THE AUTHOR OF INVISIBLE JUSTICE REFLECTS ON ALL-TOO-REAL VIOLENCE IN HEALTHCARE, HIS DREAM OF BEING A FICTION WRITER, AND HOW HIS EXPERIENCES IN THE ER INFORMED HIS FICTION.

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“Gary, I found your book wonderful . . . I just kept turning the pages. I couldn’t stop. I wanted to know what happened next?. . .What happened next?. . . What happened next?. . . It unfolds in a really good way.

“I like that being a doctor, you have access to that kind of information. And your protagonist is a woman. She ends up joining this thing called the Tribunal, which is kind of like a Dexter on Steroids – as she gets the bad guys.”

— Jack Canfield,
Author of Success Principles
Co-Author, Chicken Soup for the Soul series,
with over 600 million books sold

“Dr. Gary Brown has created a rip-roaring Dexter with Doctors thriller, using his deep-dive knowledge of medical catastrophes, hard-earned as they were by one of America's unmatched eye surgeons, from slicing into eyeballs for decades. This is the kind of book you keep thinking about as you go through.”

— David Henry Sterry, Best-Selling Author of “Chicken”

“Gary Brown blends his considerable medical acumen with gripping storytelling ability to take the medical thriller to new heights.”

— Dr. Timothy Olsen, Professor, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, Ophthalmology

Tell us about the Kyle McCann and Graham Kurland thriller series and what inspired you to write it.

The idea began years ago when a pathologist colleague told me a shocking fact: fewer than half of murders are ever solved. This really got me thinking about justice and medicine.

Of course I wanted my stories to feature doctors. It’s the world I know, but also, physicians are on the front lines of human suffering. They see the aftermath of violence, illness, and misfortune. Doctors do everything they can to heal the damage, but sometimes justice never comes.

So, I created Kyle McCann and Dr. Graham Kurland. Kyle is a brilliant infectious disease specialist—a strong female lead. Graham, her love interest, is a transplant surgeon and former Army Ranger. They both suffer PTSD.

Together they are drawn to dangerous situations, and, in the process, confront the darker side of human nature.

You are a debut author at age 76. When and why did you start writing novels?

I loved writing ever since I was a child. During my first year of ophthalmology residency, I’d get up around four or five in the morning and write before going into the hospital.

In medicine we often say that doctors do two things—we help people live longer, or we help them live better. I came to believe that stories can help people live better. A great story can take us away from our pain and also entertain us. That idea stayed with me through my career.

It has taken most of my life to bring these novels into the world. I’m 76 now, and it’s very satisfying to finally see them published.

Why did you originally choose medicine?

When I was a child, I watched my grandmother lose her vision. After my grandfather died, she had managed well on her own, but once she went blind everything changed. She ended up in a nursing home and became very depressed.

That had a major impact on me. I saw how meaningful it would be to help people preserve their sight. That eventually led me into ophthalmology and retinal surgery.

You’ve also been seriously ill yourself. Did that change how you see patients—and the characters you write?

Very much.

I didn't know I had polycystic kindney disease until my mid thirties. It presented itself with serious complications and eventually my kidneys failed. I was frequently in the hospital. My sister donated a kidney that saved my life. Not long after the transplant I developed Guillain-Barré syndrome and became completely paralyzed for nearly a year.

When you go through something like that, you understand patients in a completely different way. I was fortunate and returned to surgery, but the experience gave me a deeper compassion into what my patients endure and affirmed my belief in the power of hope during difficult times.

Why write medical thrillers instead of memoir or nonfiction?

My imagination naturally goes toward fiction. I want to entertain people but also explore questions about medicine and human behavior.

I also noticed that novels often get medical details absurdly wrong. I always loved science and knew I could do better. When readers encounter medical events in my books, they can be sure the science is real.

Tell us more about your lead characters, Doctors Kyle McCann and Graham Kurland.

Dr. Kyle McCann, the female lead, is brilliant, determined, and able to deal with situations that would overwhelm most people.

Kyle and Graham together reflect many things I saw in medicine—the trauma doctors witness and the emotional weight physicians often carry.

At the same time, they represent something admirable. They are imperfect but fundamentally exceptional people who can inspire us because they are driven by a desire to do what is right, even at a cost to themselves.

You often talk about hope. Why is that so important to you?

My wife Melissa and I studied hope in patients and found something interesting. When people leave a medical visit with even a small sense of hope, their quality of life improves.

Hope is powerful. It doesn’t mean ignoring reality. It means believing there is still a path forward. I saw that again and again in patients facing serious illness.

How does it feel to publish your first novels in your seventies?

It feels very good.

After everything I’ve been through medically, I’m grateful to have the chance to do it. There were long stretches when my health made writing difficult. Medicine and life got in the way, but I always came back to it. Resilience has been a big part of my life. In some ways these books are another expression of that.