Six classic noir novels involving doctors and nurses … and crime, sex, betrayal and suspense. Diagnosis: Kick-ass noir.
Ship’s Doctor by Henry Lewis Nixon
Decades before The Love Boat and Dr. Odyssey, there was Ship’s Doctor, lost for nearly 70 years.
Dr. Richard Williams has been married twice, drinks too much, and is seeking escape from his miserable life by spending three months as the medical officer on a cruise ship. But once he is at sea, he finds himself plunged into a raging storm of lust, betrayal and danger when he falls for an alluring passenger with a dark secret.
Obsessed by March Hastings
A woman with an insatiable desire for sex seeks help from a psychiatrist… telling him her emotional story, hoping to end her unquenchable lust, find her true self, and live a normal life. But is it too late?
“March Hastings was the pen name of Sally Singer. Her works focused on the world of wealthy people and their psycho-sexual troubles. Her plots are convincing, style confident, characters unapologetically passionate yet believable, and dialogues top notch.” The Book Haven For The Retro Reader
Student Nurse by Gail Jordan
Martha Desmond is a student nurse who loses her virginity to Jordan Ainslee, a famous, womanizing playwright who is temporarily a patient there because of his drinking problems. They marry and move into his Manhattan penthouse. But it isn’t long before his true nature emerges and he begins seducing an actress. So Martha abandons the marriage, escaping to a small town in Florida, where her life takes a passionate and dangerous turn in her pursuit of true love.
The Bawdy Mrs. Grey by Henry Lewis Nixon
Kitty Grey is a young, conniving private nurse who married her much-older patient — a rich, pudgy, hotel magnate in poor health who was desperate for a wife. She loves his money, his mansion and his servants, but he can’t satisfy her raging, physical needs…and she’s not willing to wait until he dies to to get what she wants. So she seduces Mike Callahan, an ex-GI with a criminal past, and convinces her husband to hire him as their driver, creating a deadly triangle of passion, betrayal and greed.
Quality by Cid Ricketts Sumner
Boston nursing school graduate Pinkey Johnson has blond hair, blue eyes and a secret– she’s actually black. She’s managed to fit in naturally among her new friends in the North, but she never quite fit within the small, southern town she came from. But now, on the eve of marrying a white doctor, and forced to tell him the truth about herself, she returns to Mississippi, where she must face the racism and inequities that are a way of life for blacks in the south of the 1940s. And yet she stays, struggling to find both herself and her place in a world that’s dangerously black and white.
This powerful, controversial novel, published in 1946, was adapted three years later into the acclaimed Elia Kazan-directed classic Pinky, which starred Jeanne Crain and earned multiple Oscar nominations.
Cid Ricketts Sumner, Gail Jordan, Henry Lewis Nixon, March Hastings /
Anthologies, Crime Fiction, Romance
