Medical thrillers: doctored fiction for future doctors?

Medical thrillers have been a mainstay of popular fiction since the late 1970s and still attract a wide readership today. This article examines this specialized genre and its core conventions within the context of professionally-based fiction, i.e. the class of thrillers written by professionals or former professionals. The author maps this largely unchartered territory and analyzes the fictional representations of doctors and medicine provided in such novels. He argues that medical thrillers, which are not originally aimed at specialized readers and sometimes project a flawed image of medicine, may be used as a pedagogical tool with non-native learners of medical English.