If a Marx Brother had played a gay rheumatologist at a London hospital, the characterization might have conjured Eitan Rose, the central figure in A Particularly Nasty Case, an obscenely hilarious mystery and the first novel from Adam Kay (This Is Going to Hurt).
Eitan is back at work after a four-month suspension resulting from a manic episode (he has bipolar disorder) that corresponded with a romantic bust-up. Supervising Eitan's return is his nemesis, Douglas Moran, the hospital's medical director. When an adorable hospital porter with new-boyfriend potential suggests that they ransack Moran's office, Eitan agrees, and then agrees, mid-ransack, to the sexual position in which Moran catches them. Eitan reports to work the following day to face the music and learns that Moran suffered a fatal heart attack--strange, as the man recently told Eitan that his stress echocardiogram was normal. What's more, Eitan knows that Moran's wife was furious at her husband. Eitan decides to sniff around--"After all, medicine was nothing if not detective work."
Kay's unremitting humor ranges from clean to unrepeatable here. (Okay, fine, here's one that's pushing it: Eitan's hesitant friend speaks "with the enthusiasm of somebody who's just agreed to shower with Prince Andrew.") As A Particularly Nasty Case works its way to its big reveal, which will have its detractors, the novel promotes compassion for those suffering from mental illness, which may or may not have informed some of Eitan's more questionable investigative strategies (the number of manhandled corpses is greater than one). --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer