Double Fault: A Doctor Nora Kelly Mystery

by Kate Scannell

When black market stem cell treatments turn deadly, emergency room physician Dr. Nora Kelly faces her most dangerous case yet.

From the physician-author of Death of the Good Doctor—Lessons from the Heart of the AIDS Epidemic comes the explosive third installment of the authentic medical mystery series that readers call "impossible to put down."

Dr. Nora Kelly thought she'd seen everything at Oakland City Hospital’s ER—until she uncovers the deadly world of black market stem cell therapy after a young patient dies during surgery. Though the cause of his death is unknown, she must answer to his grieving parents, a vengeful colleague, social media threats, and an ex-mentor engaged in dubious stem-cell therapies in order to solve the mystery of his shocking death.

To survive the nightmare and redeem herself, Nora must navigate a tricky liaison with her hostile colleague and a messy entanglement with her estranged mentor. She must also break through the parents’ wall of secrecy to uncover their unwitting role in the tragedy. As she grapples with questions surrounding her patient's death, she comes to terms with the traumas of her past and gains new confidence both personally and professionally.

Double Fault is a searing medical mystery that deftly captures the tumultuous world of an urban hospital while tracing the plight of a gifted physician struggling against forces that threaten her life and reputation.

Three medical mysteries (so far), one physician-author's authentic voice. From hospital killers to environmental crimes to bioethical conspiracies, the Dr. Nora Kelly series delivers medical suspense with authenticity that comes from real medical experience.

Complete reading Immortal Wounds, Lethal Control, Double Fault.
Also by this Death of the Good Doctor (medical memoir), Flood Stage (literary novel).

ACCLAIM FOR THE DOCTOR NORA KELLY MYSTERY SERIES

For Lethal Control (2)

“Scannell excels at characterization, bringing a vibrancy to individuals from a wide range of backgrounds, from debutantes to homeless individuals… The plot is taut and engaging... Scannell's authorial gaze is remarkably compassionate, especially to those who have been discarded by society at large. In addition to being an intriguing mystery, the novel is a cry for social activism...”
—BlueInk Review

“Lethal Control is a physician-led mystery with a strong social message...This series title includes characters from a previous volume; their introductions here are light, but their personalities are still made apparent... And the book’s mystery elements are punctuated with scenes of medical drama...These varying stories connect in the high-energy resolution, in which Nora's fears-and her willingness to push through them-are validated...”
—Foreword Clarion Reviews

"Scannell lifts the veil on the life-and-death struggles taking place both inside and around the edges of an urban hospital. A fast-paced drama of overlapping lives, conflicting emotions, and the threats posed by immigration, human trafficking, and environmental degradation.

330 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 20, 2024

About the author

Kate Scannell is a physician who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has published extensively in professional and lay media. Between 2000 and 2014, she wrote a medical opinion column for several Bay Area newspapers and their digital outlets, including The Oakland Tribune, The Mercury News, and The East Bay Times. Her columns explored the ethical and sociopolitical dimensions of American health care and medical practice.

Informed by her experiences as the medical director for one of the country's first hospital AIDS wards, she wrote the memoir Death of the Good Doctor: Lessons from the Heart of the AIDS Epidemic (Cleis Press, 1999). It recounts her coming-of-age as a female physician while caring for people with AIDS, most of whom would die, during the early epidemic years (1985-1990). Years after her memoir went out-of-print, it was reissued in electronic format (2010) and later resurrected into print (2012; and with photos, 2018).

Kate also wrote the novel Flood Stage, a collection of twenty interrelated stories about people living in a diverse rural community in Northern California whose lives are upturned while torrential rains overfill the local river. When flood stage arrives and apocalyptic flooding ensues, residents of this tight-knit community must make swift and painful decisions. In moments of urgent reckoning, their unique personal histories are acted out on center stage, while a universal human trauma unfolds.

In September 2018, Kate published Immortal Wounds: A Doctor Nora Kelly Mystery. This first-in-series mystery introduces us to crack diagnostician Dr. Nora Kelly and her colleagues at Oakland City Hospital. We begin a normal workday with Nora—as normal as it can be after the traumatic loss of her family two years ago. She steps into the ER, struggling with grief and self-doubt about her ability to continue practicing medicine. But there’s a corpse waiting in the administrative suite, and havoc quickly descends upon her and the hospital staff. Multiple colleagues die under suspicious circumstances. The mystery behind the mayhem draws Nora back into life and work, and her once-renowned diagnostic acumen resurrects under extreme peril. At the same time, her self-redemptive quest to solve the mystery unearths a deeply personal and painful question that reaches into the core of who she is and what she believes.

The second-in-series, Lethal Control, followed in 2021. Nora Kelly is stunned when an anonymous blue patient is abandoned at her ER. When other patients with baffling symptoms also appear, she begins to suspect environmental toxins as the cause. But to prove that and safeguard others in the community, she must outwit a powerful corporate adversary. Themes of environmental justice, homelessness, human trafficking, and immigration run through the mystery.

In the third book, Double Fault, (December, 2024), Nora is shocked and perplexed when she loses a young, healthy patient during a routine surgery at Oakland City Hospital. Though the cause of his death is unclear, Nora is blamed by his devastated and litigious parents, a hostile colleague with a covert agenda, and social media commentators who post demonizing videos of her. To survive the nightmare and redeem herself, she must solve the mystery of the puzzling death. The coroner’s report leads her to wonder if her patient had been receiving risky stem-cell injections, but to prove that she must navigate a messy entanglement with her estranged mentor. She must also break through the parents’ wall of secrecy to uncover their unwitting role in the tragedy. Drawing from her own experience of losing a child, Nora fits the puzzle pieces together to expose a complex scheme involving deceit, betrayal, stem cells, blackmail, bribery, and a college-admissions scandal.