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Patients were dying in hospital beds. Not from their illnesses. Not in any way that made sense. And for years, the man behind it moved from hospital to hospital with a nursing license and a friendly smile.
The Good Nurse by Charles Graeber is the true story of Charles Cullen, a nurse who was arrested in 2003 in New Jersey and later admitted to killing patients over a career that spanned about sixteen years. Investigators have said the true number of victims may never be known.
Graeber doesn't just recount the crimes. He follows the detectives who built the case, and the colleague who helped them: a fellow nurse who had befriended Cullen and then found herself in an impossible position. The book also asks a harder question about the hospitals that employed him. How does a person with a trail of suspicious incidents keep getting hired? What did the institutions know, and when did they know it?
It reads fast, and it is uncomfortable in the best way. It centers the system that failed, and the people who finally refused to look away. The story also reached the screen in the 2022 film adaptation, but the book is where the full investigation lives.
Ready to start tonight? Get the details and find your copy on the Hachette page. Then try to trust a hospital chart again.
