That unsettling question lies at the heart of What Can’t Be Unseen, the debut medical thriller from British NHS GP Michael Crisp, who has drawn on more than two decades of frontline medical experience to give his fiction an unusually authentic edge.
While the conspiracy at the centre of the novel is entirely fictional, Crisp says the pressures, ethical dilemmas and human stories surrounding it have been shaped by his years working as a doctor.
“Medicine is built on trust,” Crisp told That's Books and More. “But trust can sadly be exploited. The aim of my debut novel was to explore what happens when the systems designed to protect the vulnerable begin to serve power instead.”
The story introduces Dr James Harland, an NHS physician left deeply shaken after being unable to save a young migrant woman in a London emergency department.
However, her death soon becomes considerably more troubling. Toxicology reports reveal an unknown pharmaceutical compound in her blood, drawing Harland into an increasingly dangerous investigation involving illegal drug testing, organised crime and political corruption.
Alongside journalist Emily Morris and his estranged daughter Lucy, Harland faces a choice familiar to many a good thriller protagonist: protect his career and walk away, or risk everything by pursuing a truth that powerful people would rather keep hidden.
Yet What Can’t Be Unseen isn't simply a conspiracy thriller. Crisp uses the story to explore some of the less visible realities of working in medicine, including exhaustion, difficult decisions, professional responsibility and the emotional burden that can follow doctors home after their shifts have ended.
“I have seen how overstretched systems create cracks and how vulnerable people can fall through them,” he explains. “I wanted to explore what could happen if those cracks were deliberately exploited – and who ultimately pays the price.”
There are also themes of family, regret and redemption, with the novel asking how ordinary people might respond when extraordinary circumstances make doing the right thing personally costly.
With shades of medical thrillers in the Michael Crichton tradition combined with the darker territory of contemporary British crime fiction, What Can’t Be Unseen promises readers both a fast-moving mystery and some uncomfortable questions about trust, power and professional ethics.
Crisp continues to practise as a doctor while writing and is already working on his second novel, The Shadow Helix.
What Can’t Be Unseen is published by Foreshore Publishing, priced at £12.99 and available from Amazon at our own bookshop: https://link.amazon/B06iJE6mF
