And Murder - The Good Nurse - A True Story of Medicine

I had no idea what to expect with this book - I got it as I was tired of reading fiction. Really interesting. It put a lot into perspective about the safety protocols at hospitals that have been put in place in just the last decade.

The how and why of how Cullen got away with this had never been revealed until this book came out. Major kudos to Graeber.

The book traces Cullen from his early days to his arrest and
conviction. The research is very detailed and presented in an interesting way.

I wish there was more detail on his confession but overall this is definately 5-stars.

A page turner for those who love to read medical, non-fiction, well-written, medical murder mysteries. Fascinating, though you might want to avoid hospital in the future after reading this, although improvements have been made after this notorious case. I finished it in two days and was glued to every word. It never veered from the topic at hand, and I learned a lot about police work. Excellent.

I am so amazed at this story, I worked with Amy many years ago in Upstate NY, she is an angel to have helped bring this man to justice. Superb writing, thank you to all involved for the telling of this tale.

Wow this was the craziest story. If you are in the medical field you may enjoy it better because you will know what they are talking about and how catastrophic the "mistakes" were. Great medical suspense read.

If you were concerned about ethics in medicine run from this book. This string of murders was tragic and totally sanctioned by hospitals concerned with self-preservation. Very well written and as unsettling as any horror novel I have read. The real miscarriage of justice resides in the fact that the hospital administrators were not held accountable.

As a result of tragedy many precautions were put in place where this could never happen again. Never underestimate the mind of a sick and twisted individual. Always take care to ask health care professionals what they deliver to your loved one and why. It could save a life.

As a registered myself I found this book fascinating to read and extremely real. I had the knowledge to understand what Mr Cullen was doing and now I will have the rest of my career to try to understand why. Nurses normally enter the profession with a unique desire to help people and he did the exact opposite for a very long time.

I bought this the day it came out. I was familiar with the story, of course, and my son actually knows people that he worked with in a couple of hospitals, but I wanted to know how they finally caught and convicted him. I had read a review in the NY Times a couple of days before its release and believed that it would be good, but I didn't realize how good. I couldn't put it down and finished it in a day.

Steven King had this book on his top 10 list for 2013. While many details were hard to take, it was an exceptional read. I enjoyed the two separate and distinct parts of the book. The first outlining Charlie's life and crimes and the second focusing on the investigation, confession,etc. The author is a true wordsmith! I found myself looking up words throughout the book.

this book was a pretty good read and we'll written overall. There are some slow parts, but the author does a good job telling the story start to finish while including important character information. The way he talks about the hospital's actions and status during the investigation is another tidbit that adds to the story. The book does have a large amount of footnotes, however, and that did make reading the book on the kindle and kindle fire a little tricky and painful at times.

I liked this book well enough ,but I still didn't come away with much insight as to why this nurse began killing innocent patients.I work in a hospital , and found the parts where they all tried to cover their behinds are very commonplace. The medical stuff was interesting , and it is shocking that the employee who lied to the police about the Pyxis sytem was not charged with some crime for obstructing an investigation.

This book will confirm what many people think of hospitals and how they are run. This serial killer should have ben stopped much earlier but for the incompetence and disregard for the patients health.

As a charge nurse in an ICU, I found this book to be truly chilling and accurate in its depictions of the medical world and the capacity for a nurse to do so much harm. I literally read the book in one day. The book not only grabs you but it holds you close for the entirety. I am still shaken up by this story. I know that this book will definitely make me look at my environment a little more closely and be thankful for the excellent coworkers I get to work with. Charles Cullen is a monster in the truest sense of the word.

This book is well written and researched.

Overall I think the author was as objective as he could be given what is public knowledge. And he certainly leaves all judgements up to the reader to make, which is the way it should be.

Definately one of the better true crime stories I've read in a long time. The author tells the story at a very good pace and brings you to the edge of your seat with exceptional suspense. Only critical thing I can offer is that the ending comes about quick and you kind of feel you want more a little bit more of the after story of how this nutcase is getting along in prison. Overall a great read.

really liked this book- but only giving four starts because I find the "police work" section of the book to be a little blah- but this is my usual opinion. I enjoy the story of how the suspect is raised, his personal life and then his work at the hospitals the best.

Great book, it has you hooked after reading the first paragraph. Great thrill read. It is that kind of book that makes you either wanna keep reading through the night or that book you actually wanna wake up early to read. This book consumed my time. The only problem I had is that it ended so abruptly. But nonetheless, great read.

Normally, I am not interested in true crime but I heard about this book on Julie Klausner's podcast and it sounded interesting. The book did not disappoint. Graeber knows how to tell a story. He dives deep into Cullen's psyche to give the reader a sense of why he killed so many people. No stone is left unturned but you don't get lost in the details. Would recommend to any reader that is curious about hospitals, nursing, or serial killers.

I was irritated by how the system didn't check his background enough to know he was a sick man.
All they had to do is put in the extra effort, but instead they used him as a band aid to cover shifts
because most hospitals are short staffed. Very interesting and sad story.

This is an interesting look at a serial killer who just happens to be a nurse. With easy access to the drugs and patients, it still takes a very intelligent albeit sick individual to pull this off. I can't understand why the hospitals administration would keep passing this sicko off to other medical facilities without mentioning their suspecions. This book is worth a read if you are in the medical field.

This was an interesting story, however, the writing style was clunky and awkward. I really enjoyed the technical aspects especially since I'm a nurse myself. Most of the nursing jargon and technical speak was accurate. The writer could have delved deeper into Charlie Cullen's back story and psyche issues. Overall though, it was an interesting story.

It's creepy what this guy got away with. Reading can get dry at times and I did put this down for a few weeks before finishing it, but worth the read. Recommend to nurses and those in the medical field.

It is amazing that he could get away with what he did, and he still got references from his previous employer. They waited too long to catch him. I ordered this after seeing him on 60 minutes. Can't believe it.

As an RN who works in this world of critical care, this nonfiction book reads just like a fiction who-done-it murder mystery! I cannot - CANNOT- fathom this occurring, but I can easily follow the chain of events - everything that occurs is plausible - UNbelievable- but plausible. Every nurse should read this book. It might make you a little paranoid, but sometimes that's a good thing. It will definitely jolt you out of your complacency, or nonchalant lack of attention to details. It will definitely make you think twice about cosigning meds for others without getting the full details of what you're signing (this book doesn't necessarily specifically address that but I think it can be implied). I could never Imagine this happening where I work, I would think the hospital would internally catch the pyxis patterns and the EMR "surfing" patterns and fire someone based solely on that (not that firing was the issue)- but perhaps that is a result of a case like this book presents. But this book was absolutely stunning, a page turner, I couldn't put it down or get anything else done around me until I had read the entire thing, footnotes and all, in 2 days time! Creepy and scary and sad, and to anyone in the medical arena and to nurses in particular who use these drugs and technology - bone chilling, hair raising and spine tingling! And all of it true. Crazy true.

This is a true story about a man who killed many people. I thought, it was so unethical that the hospitals were not willing to investigate his acts, and allowed him to move on to the next hospital. I believe they were concerned about money, rather than patients.

Well written - unfolds like a novel. The facts are shocking - not just from the standpoint of Cullen's actions but how fellow employees and hospital management turned their backs on obvious facts and allowed a murderous spree to continue.

Excellent condition. Excellent content. Meticulously researched, a real page turner!
I would recommend this to anyone employed at a hospital and anyone unfortunate enough
to end up in intensive care!

This is a well written an amazing story. It keeps you turning the pages. It is also difficult to believe it is true, but it is. Opened my eyes to how many loop holes there are in our medical procedures. Too much trust given to our caregivers.

I really liked the writing style and overall, it was a good read. But I would have liked to have gotten to know the patients stories better and have delved a little deeper into the mind of Charles Cullen. The second part about the murder investigation, wasn't as exciting for me as the first part, and almost dragged a little at times.

What held my interest is the fact that this is a true story. Thought the book was very well outlined and easy to follow. I remember theis incident and experienced more insight to what the nurse believed in.

It was interesting and intriguing but mostly due to the nature of the true story itself. The writing style and pace was fairly slow and lacked so character development especially with Charlie's feelings and thoughts throughout. I would have liked to hear more of what he got from the charts to motivate the killings and the thrills he needed to continue.

Please note that if you are a Kindle user, you may have to ramp up the font a lot in order to successfully click to connect to the footnotes in the book. After about 80 pages into the book, I decided to dispense with the footnotes so as not to interrupt the flow of the story.

Fascinating book that you will be hard pressed to put down.

I ordered this after seeing the story of Charles Cullen on TV. I appreciated author Charles Graeber's writing style and will look into other books of his. This was a smooth read. Nice rhythm. Kept me engaged. Reads like good fiction. Fascinating peek into the mind and motivation of a serial killer.

I like to read books about true life events..the first half is bit redundant and difficult to stay captivated due to the writing but the second part was very interesting and could not put down. I recommemd .

I like to read true crime, they make you think about all the different types of people that are in the world and what they are capable of. This book was no different. it was easy to read and follow. A good weekend read. I gave it a 4 because it kept me interested I wanted to keep reading just so I could find out what happened next.

Interesting and very sad. As a nurse who worked with killer Joseph Dewey Akin, I can attest to the terror and anxiety of instinctively feeling something is wrong--deadly wrong. And this story struck a chord.

A very interesting read. As a former nurse I was in awe of how he pulled this off and very troubled with how long he got away with it. He was able to go from hospital to hospital and keep killing patients. Patients trust their nurses to be their advocates .

The author did a very good job of writing this man's story. I understand a disturbed psyche, but I am appauled by the negligence and Cya attitude of the hospital administrators and their legal representatives.

A fascinating and horrifying story. If this was a novel, you would say it was implausible. It is very troubling that these events were able to occur, despite so many people having concerns about the clinician. The motivation behind these actions, and inactions, is chilling.

I
During the book I could not believe that one person can get away with so much. I was glued to the book at times, but at times it is also written to be predictable. Recommended for people enjoying true stories and not looking for unbelievable fiction.

This book is intense! It is very well-written A real page-turner. I read it in about 2 or 3 days (while busy being a full-time Mom and full-time student). I just could not put it down. I highly recommend it (:

Book strikes a chord with anyone who has spent much time inside of hospitals, your loved ones lives at the mercy of strangers. It reads like a genre-blender: non-fiction, detective fiction, psychological thriller, character-driven with a strong heroine.

It was a well written book about a person who was battling his own demons. he was a serial killer. The book was portrayed through the killers side. How he felt was he was going through his emotions etc.

An incredible tale! I could not put this book down and actually stopped my foot when it ended. A great telling of an incredible story - and I used to work in a couple of the hospitals in the book. A must read!

Most patients go to hospitals when they are extremely ill. They hope to get better and be treated by competent and caring staff. Nurses, especially, are in the front and center of patient care. It is ironic, then, that Charlie Cullen, a board licensed nurse was a serial killer, preying on the sick and dying at nine different hospitals for years. Estimates of his victims hover around 300 patients. He is one of the worst serial killers known. It is also astounding that he got fired or was asked to resign from each of these hospitals and all but one never even reported him to the nursing board.

Charlie Cullen failed at many things that he tried. He got into a lot of trouble in the navy and was afraid he'd get a dishonorable discharge, had his marriage fall apart, and was a loner without friends. People found him weird and unlikable. He had a criminal record for stalking and breaking and entering. He was a raving alcoholic who would hole himself up in the basement and consume large amounts of alcohol. If alcohol wasn't available he'd use Listerine or some other compound containing alcohol. He had a history of killing animals and it's even probable that he poisoned his sister's abusive boyfriend when he was still a teenager.

His modus operandi was to inject patients with insulin or digoxin or other lethal medications and wait till they died. Sometimes he'd steal drugs from the medicine closets in the hospitals and not even use them. It was as if he was calling for help and no one came. He had a history of multiple suicide attempts or gestures. He liked the ride in the ambulance to the emergency room and having people take care of him. He spent months in psychiatric hospitals for depression, alcoholism and various other psychiatric problems.

Charlie's affect never seemed to be concomitant with the crimes he committed. When confronted, he showed no remorse or guilt. He acted like he didn't even care. He was even able to pass lie detector tests with an uncanny ability.

As a former psychotherapist, I read this book with both horror and fascination. Charlie appeared to have a borderline personality along with being a sociopath. He needed someone to care for him or he acted out by killing patients or making suicidal gestures. He'd enter relationships with women quickly and then they would fizzle out. Charlie would then resort to calling them repeatedly into all hours of the night, sending anonymous presents that were unwanted and, on at least one occasion, breaking into the woman's home and watching her while she was asleep.

The book terrified me. I was recently in the hospital and had the most wonderful care. In fact, most nurses and doctors are caring, wonderful professionals. However, when there is a bad seed like Charlie, there is no one more vulnerable than the sick or the dying. Charlie was a monster who was caught and tried only because of a dedicated confidential informant who worked a long time to get him put away. Most hospitals and their lawyers and risk assessment departments just turned the other cheek and let him go to do his killings somewhere else.

As a therapist for my local hospital, I've seen them turn the other cheek. Doctors or nurses are fired or asked to resign but their licensing boards are not contacted. They are let loose to do damage somewhere else. Like this book indicates, the system is broken somewhere and needs to be fixed. Even when a licensing board is contacted, they often are very ineffectual. This book does not provide any answers nor can I. However, if you read about Charlie Cullen, be prepared to have your skin crawl.

What a sick mind. Why did the hospitals keep him on staff? Why do other hospitals hire him with his record of time in a mental home. He was incapable of compassion. He had a real hate going for old and sick people.

I had to stop reading at page 58 (of 312) or 18% of the book, after essentially the same sequence of events occurred over and over: Charlie get nursing job, he kills patients, he gets fired, he feigns suicide, he is committed, he is released, he gets nursing job, he kills patients, he gets fired....ad nauseam. Boring.

Equal parts medical primer and murder mystery, "The Good Nurse" by Charles Graeber is a romp of a read. Chronicling the 16-year killing spree of male nurse Charlie Cullen, the level of research, detail, and recollection required to write this book is astounding. Part two of the saga could have been written by David Simon for a season of The Wire, with its code-speak, cop talk dialog. The homicide police are finally called in to solve this "stone cold whodunnit."

I read until my eyes hurt.

I'm almost halfway through and it's dull, boring and it drags so badly. Does it get any better? I just read a review that says the ending is horrible. How can it get any worse?? I read reviews, and esp one from Stephen King praising this book. It's so very dull! I wish I had not ordered it!

Very unfortunate writing for a powerful and riveting story. The author’s style is flowery with little-used (or known) words. Page after page after page (*79* to be exact, I counted) of interrupting footnotes that should have been either been incorporated into the story or were so insignificant that they should have been left out altogether.

He glossed over critical parts of the story but spent excessive amounts of time on details that no one cares about, such as Halloween decorations on people’s lawns. With every new impending twist and turn in the story, I’d get excited only to be disappointed in the way it was written. I came away from the book (although horrified at the topic) feeling unfulfilled as a reader. The only reason I gave it two stars is because he did do research.

Impeccably researched and well-paced, this book sets the standard for excellence in true crime reporting. Do yourself a favor and read the story of the most prolific serial killer in American history!

Painful to get through.The author threw facts and quotes together without weaving a story, or developing any characters. This fascinating story should have been a page turner, but was one of the worst books I have read.

I am not a writer. I am a nurse. I read previous reviews of this book before purchasing. I chose to believe the good reviews. Stupid is as stupid does. First let me say the miniscule printing in this book makes for a difficult read. Second, book is poorly written, disjointed, badly edited. Difficult to follow the writer's train of thought . He clearly has little or no knowledge of medicine and made little effort to educate himself. At times he stops in mid sentence. Period. Does not complete a thought. I am an avid reader. I have tried to read this book for 5 nights and each night I have fallen asleep soundly trying to get through one page! So far I have gotten thru 12 pages this week! So mad I actually paid good money for this boring poorly written garbage! A page turner it is not.

I recommend avoiding this book.

I try to select books that I'd enjoy reading. Not books that frustrate me.

It's a drag to try and read the book using the footnotes, and the book makes no sense read without them.

This book will frustrate most, if not all, readers because it is overly laden with footnotes. (As another reviewer noted.) I cannot recommend it.

Many of the footnotes could, indeed should, have been written into the prose. Many others were superfluous. Once I encountered a footnote that linked to a drug's definition when the same definition appeared in-line in the text a paragraph later. I consistently encountered "pages" (Kindle "pages" that would be shorter than printed pages) with as many as four footnotes. All the jumping around made what should have been reading pleasure onerous. I even found a footnote that was repeated a chapter later. And one footnote obviously was an incorrect reference, not to the person named.

The frustration doesn't stop with the poor writing style and lack of good editing. The book utterly fails to even discuss Cullen's apparent motives for the murders he committed. Nor does it take to task the hospitals and other care venues that put profit above patient welfare and the bureaucracies that perform rule-book jobs that totally miss the point of what one should suppose justifies their very existence. (This happened again in 2012, when the bureaucracy that ostensibly oversees the pharmaceutical industry and its (note the singular pronoun referring to a collective singular "industry") supply chain failed to intervene when it was apparent that compounding pharmacies were contaminating steroids used for epidural spinal injections, with over 30 deaths resulting.)

Moreover, the editor, if not the author, should have handled the changes for readability. The author writes poorly although had must have had thesaurus in-hand with which to sprinkle around a few two-dollar words. The editor, if there was one in this rushed-to-print work, also doesn't have a good grasp of at least one particular of grammar: Collective singular nouns (such as company names) are always incorrectly referenced using plural pronouns.

A good book on the subject would not only give a full accounting on Cullen but also of the supposed care facilities and oversight bureaucracies. This book does neither. Skip it.

I could not wait to finish this book. I'm so disappointed that I wasted my time. I know what he did, but still do not understand why. I also was curious as how some people came to be friends with him and others did not. If you are considering buying this, do not...

This is a great true-crime story, but prospective buyers need to know that the book is heavily footnoted. It's not uncommon for there to be three footnotes within a page or two of text. Many of the meaty details are in the notes, which appear at the end of the book. When reading this book on a Kindle, it's very cumbersome to switch back and forth between the text and the footnotes. Many times I could navigate to the footnotes easily but then could not return to the text I had been reading. Buy this book as a hardback and save yourself a lot of frustration!

What a great read! I read this as a paper back when it was originally released in early 2013 and bought it again as a Kindle Daily deal to store it in my Kindle - it's a fascinating account of one of the worlds most unexpected yet notorious serial killers.
The book moved at a good pace & tells the story predominantly from Charlie's point of view but also canvasses police interviews and a secret informant. Charles definitely wasn't a grotesque killer like most serials, but his numbers are clearly what set him apart. He's almost likeable... which is what makes this a haunting read.
Charles Cullen first started as a nurse in the late 1980's and continued to practice until the early 2000's. Throughout that time, he worked in 9 different facilities, and killed people at all of those. I found it very intriguing how he stole the medication, how he chose patients and how he didn't get caught for so long. It is also astounding that he got fired or was asked to resign from each of these hospitals and all but one never even reported him to the nursing board.
So many facilities had concerns about him and he was often involved in internal investigations. But because of the lack of technology in those times, and the nature of the medical field, they couldn't prove that he was actually killing patients. It took many years before everything was out in the open and he finally admitted to killing about 40 patients, though some experts say it was as many as 400.
Fascinating read and if you like true crime or medical crime, I would definitely suggest one-clicking it...

* audiobook

In 2003, registered nurse Charles Cullen was arrested after spending 16 yrs killing patients via drugging/poisoning in a number of Pennsylvania and New Jersey health care facilities. Born in 1960, he's still alive and serving a life sentence with no chance of parole. Journalist Charles Graeber spent 6 yrs investigating this serial killer, including Cullen's bizarre interest in donating a kidney while locked up. Graeber is the only reporter Cullen would speak to while in prison.

I dabble only a little bit in true crime and it usually takes something unusual for me to pick up the genre. In this case, the biggest thing that drew me to this story is not so much Cullen and his vile killing of random innocents, but how the hospitals he worked for basically allowed this to happen. I'm appalled at the HR hiring practices that would allow him to be repeatedly hired, what?-- 9 or 10 times throughout 2 different states?? This is despite warnings left in his file, terminations, investigations... Cullen just worked the system, lied, and apparently background checks weren't very thorough, if they were done at all. These hospitals didn't want the bad PR and just swept this guy under the rug.

Sure makes you wonder about all the trash that continues to get rehired in high need areas that serve the public. Sure makes you rethink your next visit to the hospital.

The book started out strong and engaging. I was liking the point of view from Cullen's head and getting personal background on him. But after the first third or so, the book focused on the cops and their investigation and that just dragged on and got very, very repetitive. Will Collyer isn't the most engaging narrator I've ever listened to on an audiobook... but at least there was nothing annoying about his voice. Ultimately, I don't feel the book gave Culler's motivation more than a superficial focus. I guess we can just call him crazy, an alcoholic, and riddled with abuse and mommy issues and be done with it. And still, I wish his intentions would have been revisited throughout the book and explored more.

Some fascinating stuff here that just wasn't presented, explored, or analyzed to its full potential. In the end it just felt way too long.

As nurse we have a duty to protect our patients. We go into our field because we are caregivers. No one wants to think and a co-worker or friend has any malicious intent. I read this book electronically and have already ordered the paperback version so I can share it with my nursing and patient care staff. It makes you think twice about your nursing practice. There is a reason we draw up our own meds and policies are written to never leave meds unlocked or unattended. This book had me on the edge of my seat. My heart aches for Charlie's victims, but my own nursing practice has been enriched by this book. Mistakes happen everywhere but checks and balances are in place to prevent things like this from happening. I go into every shift with my eyes wide open and will continue to do so. You never know what someone else is up to if you don't check.

I am a daily reader who loves true crime books. While the story itself was interesting, the writing style was atrocious! It was all over the place and the footnotes were redundant. I couldn't wait to finish it not because it was good but because I wanted to get away from it!

I enjoy reading true crime, but it seems most of the ones I pick aren't well-written. Most are well researched but they get bogged down in explaining forensic evidence, or maybe they don't give good insight into the backgrounds of the people involved in the story. In my opinion, The Good Nurse is a shining example of how a true crime book should be written.

It reads like a novel, but no one could make this stuff up. As they say – truth is stranger than fiction. The areas of the medical field that were covered were explained in a concise manner and in a way that I didn't feel I needed to get a medical degree to understand. Also, I felt I truly got to know all the major characters and some of the not-quite major ones as well. This is an astounding story, and one that I'm sure I will never forget.

I even feel I understood a lot about Charles Cullen and where he was coming from. I'm not saying I condone what he did, but I get what it is that made him feel important and needed versus his many feelings of inadequacy. He certainly is a complex character who I wish had gotten the help he needed when he was in mental facilities. I'm not sure he would have totally changed, but there is a possibility that he could have been made to understand what makes him tick and how to handle it.

As horrible as the things Cullen did, the hospitals who employed him were no better. They knew he was doing terrible things, but let him resign, and then and swept it under the rug. One hospital even lied so the police couldn't get the information they needed to investigate Cullen. I was shocked to see no charges were ever filed against those places. It sounded like politics was involved in letting them get away with murder. It just goes to show that at least some hospitals are more interested in their reputation and, more importantly, their profits, than they are in keeping their patients safe and well cared for.

Excellent book. Highly recommended.

"The Good Nurse" begins and ends with Charles Cullen (not the vampire from that teen book; his name is Edward Cullen and while yes, he's technically a serial killer, he's also a vampire and not a nurse) wrapped in a cardigan. A soft yellow one at the beginning of the book. Charles Graeber, the author, isn't as interested in the cardigan at the end.

In fact, Graeber doesn't seem very interested at all in the end of his true crime piece -- but I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

"The Good Nurse" details the horrifying career of the aforementioned Charles Cullen. Charles Cullen has two first names for his whole name, and this can be confusing if you're reading casually, say, on a bus or a plane or I don't know. Where are you reading books these days? In a cafe? My partner and I were once admonished by an older couple for reading our books at a restaurant rather than talking to each other but, frankly, we talk to each other all the time, not just at restaurants, so that seemed needlessly helpful/nosy. Anyway, Graeber refers to Charles Cullen as both Charles/Charlie and Cullen -- so, again, if you're not a careful reader (which we ALL are, even Harold Bloom, so don't think about getting sniffy about this), you may think, "Wow, this book is FILLED with Murder Nurses." It is not. There is one official Murder Nurse in this book, and then some mentions of Murder Nurses in history, just to give you a Murder Nurse Context.

Things this book will not really tell you: Why Charles Cullen was a Murder Nurse, injecting IV bags with a variety of drugs -- primarily digoxin. Graeber tries, obliquely, to tie Charles Cullens's Murder-Nursing to something with his dead mom because MOMS, AM I RIGHT?! What is frustrating about this particular True Crime Lacunae is: Graeber gives us a lot of other glimpses into -- allegedly -- Charles Cullens's thought processes. Graeber footnotes (a LOT -- and more on that in a minute) passages that he says come from interviews with Charles Cullen. These are passages that say things like "Charlie was pretty certain they were just looking at his digoxin, as if dig was the problem. But the night before Fleming's interview, Charlie had killed a man with dobutamine,a chemical relative of adrenaline. It worked fine." So, Graeber wants us to feel privy to Charles Cullens's success-thoughts about his murders; but at no point are we treated to a conversation between Charles Cullen and Graeber where Graeber asks, "So, um. Any thoughts as to why you, you know--" ::makes syringe motion with hand::

Graeber is a little better at getting at the motivations of the several hospitals that hired Charles Cullen -- even though he had been Murder-Nursing his way through most of New Jersey and Pennsylvania (or, at least, the parts of Pennsylvania that are near New Jersey. I don't think Charles Cullen ever made it down as far as Philadelphia. If he did, I wonder if he would take some time to visit the Mutter Museum -- a museum of medical oddities including things like the Megacolon and the Soap Lady as well as a whole wall of terrible things that can happen to eyes). For hospitals to admit they had a Murder Nurse on staff would have opened them up to a mountain of hospital-destroying lawsuits. So, bodies pile up, Charles Cullen is told to look for opportunities elsewhere, and we as readers learn that they're hiring pretty much ANYONE in hospital HR, with the only qualification being: "Do you promise not to do any background checks on Murder Nurses?" "I...guess so?" "Great. When can you start?"

Other issues with the book: Graeber loves an endnote. Or -- at any rate -- in the early parts of the book, Graeber loves a endnote. Graeber will send you flipping to the back of the book for all manner of things. Sometimes it's to explain that St Barnabas "was stoned to death by recalcitrant Jews" which, okay, interesting, but Charles Cullen, Murder Nurse, is not stoning anyone at all ever and yes, I know, he worked at St Barnabas hospital but there's no narrative connection between the stoning of St Barnabas and the soft-yellow-cardigan-wearing Charles Cullen. He also explains that "escharotomies" is Latin for scar. And these are, of course, perfect end-note items because they don't necessarily belong in the text itself. It's just: one gets tired of stopping what one is reading to flip to the back to read an endnote that isn't really germane. You will do this so often that you will then skip endnotes that actually ARE germane.

I guess what I'm saying is: if you're the type of reader that I am, this book will drive you bonkers with the endnotes. If you are someone who loves a good, pointless endnote: it's nice to meet you, ghost of David Foster Wallace.

Interestingly, Graeber is endnote mad for about the first half of the book. Right around the time my interest in Charles Cullen started to wear thin ("Oh, neat: he's attempting suicide again..."), Graeber appears to lose interest in Charles Cullen and Co., too. The footnotes trickle to a halt, and the writing stops trying for swirls of artistry (Graeber is practically rhapsodic about burn victims) and just gives us--

Oh yeah: let's talk about that. So. Book 1 is all about Charles Cullen, Murder Nurse. Book 2 introduces the ::ChungChung:: "Law & Order" portion of the narrative with two detectives. The detectives speak the way detectives on TV speak, which is neat and comforting because we like it when the world works in the way broadcast has taught us. Graeber delivers all of these conversations within quotation marks, as if (a) Graeber may have been there?; or (b) as if these conversations were all recorded and Graeber is just jotting them down.

This is another point where your mileage may vary on the enjoyment: I found these sections distracting because they seemed too unbelievable and designed to give the book narrative energy. Graeber isn't a strong enough writer on his own for expository energetic writing -- so he creates these mini scenes where our cops say things like, "What the hell was that?" and "You've got to be s***ting me!" At another point, one of the interviewees of these cops says, "You're late. I've been waiting for you for five month." This would be a perfect tag before a commercial on a television program. It's distracting in a book that I wanted to give me insight and background into Charles Cullen, Murder Nurse.

Ultimately, is the book worth reading? Sure, if you're someone who dabbles in True Crime. It's readable, quick, and two-thirds of the story is FASCINATING in spite of Graeber's writing. The ending is a let down, with a weird coda about a kidney donation that could have been better used with some transcriptions of the conversations between Graeber and Charles Cullen. But I don't know if I'd make a special point of tracking the book down unless you're a True Crime Completist. It serves better as a check-mark on a list than as a document of a crime.

I'm a true crime fan and was interested in Charles Cullen, but this book did not answer basic questions about why. Lots of references were made to Cullen's disordered and probably abusive childhood, but the lack of detail left me feeling incomplete as a reader. And the footnoting in this book is absolutely horrendous. The vast majority of notes should have been included in the main text. Some were outright ridiculous: text makes reference to Cullen being a young man and footnote reads, in its entirely: "he was twenty-four years old". Text says he grew up in West Orange NJ and the footnote says "On Kling Street." REALLY? That couldn't be included? Other footnotes had medical information that would have clarified details and fleshed out some of the murders, but were chosen as back-of-the-book material. Why? Much of this book felt like an editor said, gotta keep the main text under 300 pages, and the author complied, to the detriment of his readers.

If you want to read this book, get it from the library. Don't waste your money.

'The Good Nurse' describes the horrific acts of Charles Cullen, who killed hundreds of people in New Jersey and Pennsylvania Hospitals, by injecting them with a variety of drugs. The story is well known through the news media, and this book was supposed to tell the inside story of Cullen's acts. The problem is that is really doesn't do this.

The book is written as a series of relatively short chapters with numerous footnotes, which are incredibly distracting and force you to leaf to the back of the book and stop reading. I am not sure why the author chose to use this method, but, given the numbers of footnotes, it seems like he could have incorporated these into the story to make it more interesting. Ultimately, I just stopped reading the footnotes because I couldn't stand to continue flipping to the back of the book.

The other main problem with the book - and this may not be the fault of the author but instead the unwillingness of the murderer to cooperate - is that we really never understand why Cullen did what he did. Was it his childhood? Did he fell like he was saving those he murdered? Or was he simply a mentally ill person carrying out some internal need for satisfaction? The truth is that Charles Cullen must have had some sort of serious mental illness or personality disorder, but this is not explored. Even more frustrating is that when he finally confesses, the author just summarizes the confession in one or two paragraphs and doesn't give the details that you want at the point in the book that it happens.

The book's not all that bad and it does tell the story in superficial detail enough to make you read it to the end. But the lack of depth, as well as the style of writing make this book unsatisfying to say the least.

A co-worker of mine told me about this book because she's been meaning to read it for a while. And because I work in the legal field and medical field a little, I was very interested. I grabbed a copy of this from my library and dove right in. I didn't know too much about this book when I started except that it was about a nurse who killed patients, but I soon found out a lot more.

This was an interesting book. Charles Cullen first started as a nurse in the late 1980's and continued to practice until the early 2000's. Throughout that time, he worked in 9 or 10 different facilities, and killed people at all of those. I found it very intriguing how he stole the medication, how he chose patients (sometimes chose them, sometimes left it up to whoever got a specific IV bag), and how he didn't get caught for so long! So many facilities had concerns about him and he was often involved in internal investigations. But because of the lack of technology in those times, and the nature of the medical field, they couldn't prove that he was actually killing patients. It took many years before everything was out in the open and he finally admitted to killing about 40 patients, though some experts say it was as many as 400.

It's always fascinating to get into the minds of killers even though many won't admit to why they did it. I thought this author did a pretty good job laying out all the facts, keeping my interest, and showing Cullen's true, cold character. Interesting read and if you like true crime or medical crime, I would suggest picking this up.

Pagesofcomfort.blogspot.com

Unfortunately not a very good book. After glossing over almost everthing (murders, missing drugs, incompetent hospital administrators, wives, girlfriends, children, multiple hospitials, etc.) , we are suddenly confronted with nothing but verbatim transcripts of supposedly private conversations and criminal interrogations. The only reason the author ever gives (or even tries to determine) as to why the nurse has become a serial killer is because he felt betrayed when his mother died in a hospital and he was bullied by his siblings. Surely there is more to a psychotic sociopath than those two things which could have been more fully explored? But the author never really goes there. I had some problems with a lot of the terminology which is obviously used in the medical field but not commonly used otherwise. For instance, the term "coding". I thought this meant entering patient data into medical records using nursing acronyms or something like that but it actually means calling out things like "Code Blue". Just not that interesting....

Charles Graeber is a truly remarkable reporter and a great writer: He has written more than a book about a crazy, serial-killing nurse; it is the contrasting of the nurse's deeds with the attempts of the greedy, profit-minded hospitals to protect themselves by covering up his deeds and endangering more patients that makes the book a piece of brilliance and a portrait of America now, its corruption, morals, and values. Graeber's nurse, motivated at least in his own crazy mind by the notion of protecting his patients from pain, seems an innocent compared to the terrible villany of the hospital administrators and p.r. people who lied to the police and the world in order to keep their reputations clean. Like all fine books, Graeber's documents all the worlds and relationships his story passes through. Particularly fine is his thrilling depiction of the police investigation, his portrait of the disturbed nurse and the family who destroyed him, and the heroes of the story--the cops and those in the hospitals who risked their jobs and livlihoods to stop the killing in the face of the hospitals who held the power to literally destroy their lives and reputations. True, crime seems an incredibly limited way to describe this completely engrossing portrait of the realm of medicine, our society and its monsters and, finally, those with the decency to risk all to overcome them. Buy this book to understand our world. Charles Graeber does. I will read anything I see his name attached to from now on.

This book reads like a novel, but is a true story of the man who is possibly the worst serial killer you’ve never heard about. You might not have heard of Charles Cullen because he operated subtly, in medical settings where deaths are common anyway.

However, so much of the tragedy of this story lies in the fact that Cullen’s sly but deadly injections WERE noticed or at least strongly suspected. However, the fear of lawsuits and the very nature of corporate medical administration prevented his killings from being reported. This is a chronicle of how he was passed along from hospital to hospital with “neutral” or even praising recommendations. He was the proverbial hot potato being tossed from hand to hand. You might find it interesting to read a book such as “Criminal Investigative Failures” by D. Kim Rossmo in conjunction with this book, in order to get a clearer idea of how group dynamics often lead to perpetrators and their crimes being obscured or outright ignored.

But any thumbnail summary of “The Good Nurse” can hardly do justice to the book. Graeber is an excellent writer who is able to suffuse his report with a dark poetry. He has a knack for the apt metaphor that puts you there, at the scene. For example, he tells how Cullen actually enjoyed the tension after each kill, how he keenly anticipated being arrested. “He enjoyed the waiting, the little death of that caesura.” That special tension made coffee taste better; gave every snap of a glove extra portent & meaning.

What’s more, Graeber writes in short chapters, each one a needle injection of further derangement. Be forewarned though. The first chapters are very graphic. They deal with conditions in a burn unit where Cullen served early in his career as a nurse. While you might have known how life-threatening burns can be, you probably didn’t fully realize the sort of trauma inflicted on the body by fire.

Graeber doesn’t involve himself in too much psychological speculation about Cullen’s motives. In the course of outlining Cullen’s biography, Graeber does suggest certain influences that might have been at work. Graeber also suggests that Cullen might have been killing himself by proxy. Since he was personally afraid to die, all his suicide “attempts” notwithstanding – he might have been keeping death as his familiar by killing others.

All around, this is a fascinating portrait of the man who is perhaps America’s most prolific serial killer, but who fit no known psychological profiles. He was neither a classic “Angel of Mercy” nor a standard sexual sadist. His evil could not be categorized or fathomed – as is ultimately the case with most evil.

I have the utmost respect for nurses. My sister was an RN for 49 years in Philadelphia and Chester, PA, at hospitals that cared for the indigent and the wealthy. She taught me a lot: coma patients hear & remember even if you whisper; visitors of diabetics losing limbs ignore posted warnings and sneak in sugary snacks; and terminal patients know they are dying, and family denying it makes their death much more difficult - they spend their last days comforting family rather than family comforting them. That knowledge made Charles Cullen RN, the most prolific serial killer in the USA, bad enough, but 9 medical facilities in PA & NJ hired & fired him, and gave him references allowing him to murder 300 patients. This wasn't in 1960 - his final charges were in 2006. NEVER leave a loved one alone even if hospital protocol dictates visiting hours. Use your phone to capture every medical procedure, especially medicines added to saline drips.

Books like THE GOOD NURSE aren't really designed to give you a warm and fuzzy feeling about any health service. Particularly one that seems to be motivated by profit and avoidance of lawsuits, programmed to just move a problem on, and avoid looking too hard at anything that might be slightly amiss.

This is really a chilling story, looking closely at the career (nursing and killing) of registered nurse Charlie Cullen. Particularly chilling as there was nothing merciful or even understandable about the killing spree that led Cullen to kill patients. Randomly choosing his victims, even hands off killing by injecting drugs into random, unallocated IV bags, Cullen's motivation for his actions seem to be wrapped up in his own severe psychological problems. Unfortunately Cullen himself isn't particularly forthcoming about his childhood or his background so there are points at which the narrative is at a loss, the author is at a loss, everyone is at a loss to explain why this man did what he did.

What's even less able to be explained is a medical system that refused to see what was happening. Either wilfully or stupidly, the reader is left speechless by the seemingly incomprehensible reaction of authorities, particularly once a couple of very dedicated policemen get onto his trail, and a dedicated and caring colleague steps up to assist the investigation.

To be brutally frank, whilst what Cullen was doing is horrifying, what was even more horrifying were the actions of the hospital administrators, lawyers and management who worked overtime at cover up. Their actions were criminal, and whilst it's some relief to know that some families were able to take legal action, there's absolutely no excuse, no justification, no reason on this earth that any of them should not have been hauled to account by authorities.

A GOOD NURSE is a really uncomfortable read as it's definitely truth being considerably more frightening than fiction. Whilst Cullen was ultimately convicted of a very minor number of the deaths for which he is responsible, and there is some feel good factor in the way that some dedicated policework and ethical behaviour from a single nurse prevailed, the rest of the system comes out looking underwhelming to say the least.

[...]

Charles Cullen may have been the most prolific serial killer in history. The only reason we do not know for sure is that he has forgotten many of his hundreds of victims. Even though they were all hospitalized patients with full records, Cullen's crimes extended for sixteen years and records are now missing, or in many cases the hospitals are simply reluctant to dig into them again. Little could be gained now by doing so, but that sort of reluctance is what allowed Cullen to keep killing. It's the dismal lesson in _The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder_ (Twelve) by journalist Charles Graeber, a true crime story distinctive because of its medical setting and bureaucratic denial. Graeber has had the cooperation of Cullen in writing this book; he first covered the case when the imprisoned Cullen was approached in 2005 about donating a kidney, causing a public uproar. Graeber became the one journalist with whom Cullen would remain in correspondence.

The book is fascinating because of its picture of bureaucratic denial and the intrepid investigators who overcame it. The portrait of Cullen himself is vague; he remains an enigma, and the brief, partial history of his early life certainly does not explain what came after. He tampered with patients' IV bags, injecting insulin or digoxin into the solution, which still looked normal when it was hooked up to be sent into the veins of a patient. Patients would get their doses and would have their consequent symptoms hours later, often when Cullen was off shift. One hospital after another (there were about ten) took him on, found there was some connection between his shifts and with patients dying, and let him go, often with referrals for his next job that did not indicate that there had been any difficulty. Soon after Cullen started working at Somerset Medical Center, an upscale hospital in Somerville, NJ, patients started dying, and the hospital noticed it. When finally they reported it to poison control, the official at poison control said repeatedly, "This is a police matter." He also explained that poison control taped its incoming phone calls, and he told Somerset officials that if they didn't call the cops, he was going to. Two smart investigators were put on the case. They looked at the patterns and timings of the deaths, with hospital administrators sometimes deliberately acting to make the connections murky. The investigators got as an ally a nurse that worked with Cullen and liked him, but who wanted the investigation to succeed. She agreed to wear a recording device in a conversation with Cullen, and got his confession on the record. She risked her career to make justice happen. She is one of the few hospital employees who looks good in these pages.

Charles Cullen represents a frightening bogeyman, a stealthy killer with no conscience. His story would be almost unbelievable, but Graeber has provided voluminous notes, and his account is even and matter-of-fact. Cullen isn't the scariest part of this book, though. Cullen endured complaints, disciplinary action, and even official suspicion that he was murdering patients, and yet he was able to go from one hospital to another for years and for hundreds of murders before anyone took serious action against him. If the trustees of the health of inpatients were doing so little about a murderer in their midst, how else is the system failing?

The Good Nurse is a chilling true crime story revealing the murderous sixteen year career of registered nurse Charlie Cullen, arrested in 2003 and eventually confessing to the murder of forty patients but suspected as being responsible for as many as three hundred.

Unlike 'Angel of Mercy' killers, whose twisted thinking means they think they are helping ease suffering, Cullen's motivation for the murders were frightening in their lack of discrimination. He chose patients to murder based on random criteria irrespective of their ability to recover, injected drugs into anonymous IV bag's, and made deliberate medication errors, unmindful of his victim's lives.

Psychiatrists eventually ascribed Cullen's actions to his need to compensate for his feelings of powerlessness. Graeber shares enough of Cullen's personal history to give an idea of where his pathology was rooted though I got the impression there were deliberate gaps in his childhood experiences. As Graeber admits Cullen wasn't very forthcoming in speaking about his life, this is understandable. Cullen's ex-wife's cooperation with the author revealed little other than his state of mind during the early years of his murderous sixteen year career.

The second half of the book concentrates on the police inquiry into Cullen. The research seems thorough in regards to the tracing of Cullen's work history, the murders he was and may have been responsible for and the details of the police investigation. The difficulties in proving Cullen's culpability are clearly explained, including the negligence of the hospitals who employed Cullen.

The book is also an indictment of a health care system motivated by profit, where lawyers make decisions not based on best practice but with corporate indifference. I was sickened no less by the actions of those that permitted Cullen to continue his spree, than I was by Cullen himself. Though unfortunately none of the various hospital administrators could be held criminally liable for their complicity in Cullen's crimes, I was pleased that some of the families were at least able to enact civil penalties.

A disturbing yet fascinating read, The Good Nurse is the story of a frightening sociopath, a negligent and corrupt health care system and the tireless work of those who attempted to bring them both to account for their crimes.

Four stars or three stars--the rating I give this book is a tossup. The subject matter is hard to read, so it would get three stars for that reason. But Graeber did such excellent research and, most importantly, he tells not only the horror of what Charles Cullin did but, also, the horror of what the hospitals who employed him did.

This is the nonfiction story of the serial killings of as many as 400 patients in 9 hospitals. The murderer was a nurse, Cullen.

Murder is disturbing, especially when it's nonfiction. But worse, at least for this reader, is the realization that many, if not most, hospitals do not adequately prevent something like this from happening.

In all nine hospitals where Cullen was employed, nurses were given too much free access to drugs, when the pharmacy, not individual nurses, should have controlled them. Plus, the hospitals hardly screened prospective employees. Even a highly rated hospital checked only a couple references and asked few questions. Plus, the hospitals they did call didn't tell the truth. They suspected that Cullen was dangerous, yet let him move on to kill again.

Because this happened over and over with nine different hospitals, it can be assumed that hospitals in general, even those that get high ratings in US NEWS AND WORLD REPORT, should be suspect. Does your hospital, too, do what is best for the hospital rather than patients? And, worse, would your hospital, too, cover up the truth if their nurse is possibly murdering patients?

So, again, this is hard to read. At the same time, it is important that we know. I hope more people read this.

I won this book through goodreads.com.

I bought the book because I was impressed by the NPR author interview about a year ago. The nature of the crime is unconsciounable, and the dissociation between the act and his person is horrifying. The absence of explanation by the killer to the families and friends of the victims is frustrating as well, but what is even more enraging is the system that allowed the murders to continue for years, and the hospital risk managers and their passive aggressive way of stalling the investigation by witholding crucial information, for 3 months during which time apparently 5 more patients were murdered. (I watched CBS 60 minute interviews after the book.) Anybody who will read this book will be as incredulous as I was.

The author has the kind of talent that turns dry, fragmented data/information into a fiction like, personable and relevant story, generating empathy for the victims and rage for the injustice, and education about the complex social issues. The author provides the relevant biographical information about the killer, who, without justifying his crimes, is protrayed as a complex human being, not solely as an evil entity. The detectives and the confidential informant come alive in the book, and their unique personalities as well. He apparently spent 7 years to write this book, and I certainly appreciate the fruit of his hard work.

This true story of a murderous nurse is spine chilling... especially for those of us in central New Jersey who know the hospitals Charles Cullen worked for. I've spent time in these hospitals, both as a patient and a visitor.

It's shocking how easy it was for Cullen to kill patients by inserting drugs into their IV bags. The systems in place at hospitals allowed for him to obtain drugs without a trace, administer them without having to do it himself or even be in the room, track a patient's deadly downward spiral, and then cover his tracks by helping at the "code" that precedes the patient's death.

Equally shocking is how lax hospitals were not only in the policing of their systems, but also in their hiring and firing policies. That Cullen was able to take job after job in hospitals despite being fired for serious infractions at each hospital is mind boggling. Charles Cullen wasn't the only criminal at these hospitals. Charles Graeber demonstrates how hospital administrators actively stonewalled investigators -- even lied to them -- when the noose finally begins to tighten around Cullen.

Some readers complain that the author doesn't delve adequately into Cullen's motives for killing the hundreds of patients he has believed to have overdosed and poisoned. But a careful reader will note that the author suggests that Cullen took to killing as a release to his warped psyche. He seems like a person who binges and purges on food, not because he likes vomiting, but because he longs for the feeling of emotional release that purging brings. Cullen half-heartedly attempted suicide many times, but he doesn't really want to die. Instead, he finds that killing others brings the same feelings of release that dealing with the turmoil inwardly would bring.

As a reader, you might be tempted to quit within the first part of the book. The author goes off onto tangents that have shock value, but no connection to the story, like his lengthy description of burn victims, how they're treated and how they die. But try to persevere into the second part when the investigation starts. The book becomes a page turner after that. You also need to ignore the footnotes, maybe until after you've read the book. The publisher has regrettably chosen to include the notations for footnotes within sentences, not after them. It's visually and mentally disruptive for the reader. But after you've read the book, go back and read the footnotes. They contain a lot of information that would have been better included in the narrative.

What I believe makes 'true crime' books so marketable is that they appeal to a reader's desire to figure out why the criminals perpetrated their outrages. In the case of serial killers, readers devour the psychological mechanisms that "made them tick". What prompted Ted Bundy or David Berkowitz or whoever to destroy so many lives? These readers may be put off by Charles Graeber's "The Good Nurse".

Charles Cullen's motivations for killing at least forty (and possibly 400) hospital patients are, at best, the subject of guesswork. Cullen reveals nothing. In a sense, he is nothing--a walking void who killed. Several witness accounts remarked about a deadness, a vacuum in his gaze. There are hints as to how and why his methodical, efficiently murderous behavior developed: especially provocative is his account of his tempestuous and "miserable" (Cullen's word) childhood. Then there are several accounts of his alcoholism, depression and almost laughable suicide attempts. But that's about all that Cullen offers and Graeber can suggest. I can understand some of the frustrations of some reviewers about this lack of motive. Where are his demons, his "voices-in-my-head" defense? Why was it not important to Cullen to witness the deaths of so many of his victims--in many cases, to not even know which of his victims would die from his poisoned i.v. bags? This is, at the risk of understatement, a bizarre, infuriating and terrifying case.

However, to Graeber's credit, "The Good Nurse" is fulfilling on so many other levels. First, it is a stunning revelation at how incompetent and dangerous the access to and administration of pharmacological products were during that time and at those hospitals.

Second, if and when improprieties were discovered, Graeber's subtle but scathing indictment of those hospitals' refusal to contact law enforcement or, at the very least, prevent Cullen from practicing (or killing) again is nothing short of jaw-dropping. Image and self-preservation trumped the lives of future patients.

Third, as in all successful true crime stories, "The Good Nurse" is a tale of dogged police work and, in this case, a tale of law enforcement officials exploring a new and alien type of homicide investigation. Detectives Tim Braun and Dan Baldwin were used to drive-by shootings, botched robberies gone violent, family and domestic disputes. In those cases, there were the usual suspects using the usual weaponry. In Cullen's case, though, the detectives had to become familiar with hospital routines, chemical and pharmaceutical interactions, human anatomy, and the labyrinth of medical procedure and hospital administration. This was unchartered territory but it did not deter them.

Fourth, it is the story of a woman's conflicted relationship with Cullen. Co-worker Nurse Amy Loughren liked and befriended Cullen. However, when faced with the evidence, she agreed to assist in the investigation no matter how agonizing her involvement became.

One last thing recommends this book: the writing. Charles Graeber and his editors have done a remarkable job at keeping the pace swift and engaging. The language varies from the horrific descriptions of burn units, to Cullen's claustrophobic experiences in the Navy, to the infuriating hospital administration haggling, to the tracking down of the killer. On all these levels, Charles Graeber's "The Good Nurse" succeeds and satisfies.

Could it be that you have never heard of the most prolific serial killer in American history? If it is true that Charlie Cullen is responsible for hundreds of deaths and his name is unfamiliar, then yes. Cullen was a nurse who spent more than 16 years torturing and killing patients with potent mixes of drugs. Even though he was suspected in many medical incidents at a handful of hospitals, it was years before he was criminally investigated. It took two intrepid detectives and the fellow nurse who may have been his only friend to finally bring him to justice. Cullen's scary tale is the subject of journalist Charles Graeber's true crime work, THE GOOD NURSE. While it leaves many unanswered questions, the book succeeds in painting a picture of mental illness, murder and the cover-ups that allowed Cullen's spree to go unchecked for so long.

Unlike many true crime books, Graeber doesn't unpack his subject's personal history in detail. Readers get only a glimpse into the dangerous and tense household in which Cullen was raised: he was the youngest of many siblings raised in a house that was "a dark, unhappy place haunted by drug-addicted brothers, adult sisters who drifted in and out on tides of pregnancy or need, and strange, rough men who came at all hours to visit them both." Cullen's father died soon after his birth and his mother when he was in high school, leaving him essentially alone in the world.

It is his mother's passing that seemed to have been the catalyst for his obsession with hospital death. After a stint in the Navy and then nursing school, Cullen found himself working at the hospital where she died. His time in the Navy appears to have been marked by severe hazing, depression and suicide attempts as well as strange behavior, but later he was popular as the only male nursing student in his class and completed the coursework successfully. Once in his chosen career, however, Cullen began to inflict pain on his patients with deadly combinations of medication, ultimately causing their deaths.

Most of THE GOOD NURSE is focused on the years Cullen spent killing in a variety of hospitals in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and the police investigation that finally stopped him. The most compelling aspect of Graeber's book is the fact that many people, including other nurses and patients' family members, had suspicions about Cullen for years. And more than that, hospital administrators had investigated him time and again, only to fire him for other reasons and then go on to give him recommendations for other nursing jobs. When police detectives, along with agencies like Poison Control, finally step in, they find years of hospital cover-ups that, while serving to legally protect the hospitals, allowed Cullen to continue to murder patients at an alarming rate and in a blatant fashion.

There is never much motivation presented by Cullen's murders; clearly he is unstable and depressed. Perhaps he suffered abuse growing up or is a sociopath, but Graeber doesn't speculate for the most part. While more background or analysis would've improved the book, it is chilling enough even without that information. Graeber's characterization of the two lead detectives and the confidential informant who brought Cullen down also makes for a good read. Not always smoothly written or intellectually satisfying, THE GOOD NURSE is still fascinating and frightening. Graeber presents his subject with an objectivity that refuses to romanticize him, and does a good job presenting the themes of moral ambiguities and ethical responsibility that is the flip side to Cullen's killing.

This is a scary page turner about one man's quiet reign of terror, those dedicated and brave enough to end it, and the dangers that can lurk in the places we may feel safest.

Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

The problem with being a True Crime fan is that the pool from which to choose grows a little drier each time you polish off one of the acknowledged classics. The ratio of nerve-shredding, sleep-depriving true crime must-reads to generic airport bookstore wannabes is something like 1 to 200. Once you've exhausted the pillars of the canon (Zodiac, The Stranger Beside Me, Helter Skelter, The Night Stalker, and, more recently, The Monster of Florence, to name a few), you find yourself grasping rabidly for any new entry whose reviews compare it, unfailingly, to the granddaddy of all true crime books, In Cold Blood.

The Good Nurse received such comparisons, and as any true True Crime fan would, I bought the book as soon as I learned of it, eager to tap back in to the horrifying thrill that makes this stuff so potent. The mark of a great true crime read--what separates the classics from the pretenders--is fear. The best of the genre get under your skin and give you chills just by recalling certain passages or imagining the depraved acts of the perpetrators. While reading one that does everything right, say, Robert Graysmith's Zodiac, you should find yourself leaving the lights on a little longer than usual before bed, checking behind the shower curtain, maybe even contemplating getting a guard dog. Lovers of this genre crave the inherent terror of it all as much as the suspense of finding and capturing a killer. Without that, a true crime book can feel more like reading the dry factual recounting of a newspaper article than the terrifying visceral thrill it should be.

And that is the problem with The Good Nurse. It's so matter-of-fact, so detail-oriented, that the story never really invades the reader's imagination. Charles Cullen was a certifiable wacko, to be sure, but he would never keep a reader awake all night the way Philip Caro's account of Richard Ramirez might. Cullen is portrayed, essentially, as a sad sack misanthropist who kills for....what? Sexual gratification? Doesn't seem that way. A sense of moral superiority? Hard to fathom. Just the thrill of the kill? We don't really know.

We never really understand anything about Cullen, other than the very clinical way Graeber describes his method for dispatching death. The murders themselves, usually the most gripping part of any crime story, are presented rather elliptically, which is to say that the typical victim is admitted to the hospital, seems to be doing just fine, and then suddenly expires in the middle of the night. Cullen, meanwhile, lingers on the periphery--of the crime scenes and the story itself. This is perhaps the first true crime book I've read where the villain at the center possessed no real character at all. Far from the mysterious phantasms of Zodiac or The Monster of Florence, nowhere as deceptively charismatic as Manson or Bundy, Cullen is maybe the least interesting psychopath in the annals of crime literature.

Other reviewers have noticed the scattershot construction of the book. The first portion deals with the killings themselves, which are relayed in a seemingly endless cycle: Cullen gets a job at a new hospital, is well-liked at first, makes a friend he quickly creeps out, and becomes something of a social outcast. Then his patients begin to die inexplicably, and before long he's shown the door, off to a new hospital and ready to start the process all over again. This is Graeber's way of indicting the hospitals who allowed this creep to continue killing patients for years without intervening, and he's right to do it, but it doesn't make for a very compelling read. Monotony sets in before page 50.

The second portion follows a pair of cops who attempt--interminably, it feels--to put the purportedly complicated pieces together to confirm their suspicions about Cullen. This may well be how the narrative played out in reality, but a gripping read it is not. It's the old Columbo dilemma: when the audience knows more than the detective investigating the crime, the audience gets bored and fidgety. It takes the police for....ever to nab Cullen, by which point interest in their efforts has long since evaporated.

Finally, a great number of reviews have described The Good Nurse as "a real page-turner" or the like. On that point, I agree, but not for the reasons they would have you believe. This book, already a slim and swift read at 320 pages, is really far shorter than that. Chapters rarely exceed three or four pages. Some chapters end within sight of their beginning. Without hyperbole, I would estimate that 15-20% of the book is just blank white space, like a too-short college term paper padded out with large font, extra spacing, and wide margins. Sure, the pages fly by, but not because the story is so riveting; a great many pages just don't have a lot of words on them.

I really wanted to like The Good Nurse, I really did. But I must admit that it perpetrated the one act a true crime tale never should: it bored me.

This book suffers from a style of prose that sounds like it belongs in a tabloid. Instead of being factual, much of the book is taken up with a lot of hyperbole. The author thoroughly researched the story, but has apparently never stepped foot in a hospital or interviewed someone who has. So much of what he reports about Charlie Cullen's workplaces does not ring true, which detracts from the story. Even though it was selected by my book club, I won't be finishing this book.

The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder
I first learned about this book from watching a 60 Minutes episode about this murderer. I was almost halfway through the book when I considered putting it down because I found the subject matter almost too disturbing to continue. However, I am glad I didn't because from that point on, the author turned to the subject of catching this sick individual. Having worked four years at a hospital, I truly couldn't believe how many hospitals really didn't do any kind of due diligence or even partial screening prior to hiring this nurse. Sure he had the credentials and i realize it is difficult to find qualified nurses, but has it come to this? If so, we are all in trouble as patients. I found myself perplexed when each and every hospital choose to just get rid of this nurse and not get to the bottom of what was going on. If he was fired and the problems no longer existed then is the all mighty dollar so important as to put others at risk. Well, it seems so. This book is worth reading, but be prepared, it is very disturbing.

I sped through this book as fast as Charles went from one hospital to the next. This book shatters the perfect view of hospitals as being a safe place, and portrays the real raw and different aspect of a hospital. This book is frightening and real, very real.

This book zooms into Cullen’s mental stability and just how easy it is for just about anyone no matter what background to get a job. Cullen was and is responsible for unspeakable amounts of deaths and terrifyingly with out remorse. The several point of views allow us readers a deeper insight to the crazy life story of Charles Cullen. The author most definitely researched as proven by the excessive footnotes in the back of the book. This gripping tale gives us insight into the terrifying case of a serial killer.

This gripping murder mystery kept me on the edge of my seat everytime I opened the book. This books organization and clarity of writing makes all of the complex medical information exceptional and also page turner with out a doubt. I insist you purchase this book, you will not regret it.

Charles Graeber does a wonderful job of telling the story of Charles Cullen who was one of the most evil people to enter the halls of our medical system. What is perhaps the most horrifying thing is that he was detected pretty early on and always given a pass by our medical system which chose a quick and easy answer rather than doing what was right. Charles Cullen was aided in his crimes by a medical system that was more afraid of being sued by an fired employee than stopping a murder. This is absolutely horrifying!

It does lose out a bit when it goes into the criminal investigation but that's the only slow part. I do think it needs more detail on what changes were enacted as a result of these crimes. But other than that this is a book of horrifying scope because there is so much evil. I strongly recommend it.

I haven't finished this book yet, but I admire the author's credibility with frequently cited sources in the text, with notes explaining the source with elaborate notes. Some reviews I saw prior to my purchase was with regard to the nature of the book, being disturbing and causing fear, sleepless nights. However, while the story is disturbing to some degree, this shouldn't be considered a horror book. It's true crime based on disturbing murders, but nothing with substantial gore. I'd give it a PG-13 on the audience rating. Very well written, journalistic, and factual. I strongly encourage buying this book if you're fascinated by true crime and the facts behind the crimes.

This is a fascinating if not completely satisfying story of how a nurse mastered work-arounds to kill dozens, if not hundreds, of patients undetected and unpunished, passed along from hospital to hospital even after suicide attempts in double digits and rising suspicions of incompetence, at best, and murderous intentions. Those who work in healthcare will be appalled by the events and frustrated by the still-missing pieces of how this could happen. Neither this book nor the 60 Minutes interview are able to shed any light into the "why" of these murders. It took a self-described pain-in-the-ass RN to guide the criminal investigation team through hospital procedures and records to develop enough of a case to force the perpetrator into a confession. The facts are extremely complex, and generally well-presented. I don't know if the author could have extracted more insights from hospital supervisors and administrators--probably not--but some morsel that would show the institutions learned from these tragedies would make the book more compelling to me.

True crime books are, for me, the guilty pleasure at the end of the week. I could spend all day reading about the victims, the killer, and their life stories because I find the psychological make up of both fascinating: why did the victim trust the killer? who damaged the killer along the way, making him/her so evil?
This book was so unique in its approach because the victims never knew the killer, possibly never saw him, and had no idea that they were about to die as a result of the wonderful world of technology and pharmaceuticals. And why the killer chose to kill is, at best, an elusive guess.
The pace of the book is like a breathless story...no boring historical view of the city or state (a common padding for many true crime books), no endless background about the chronological events in the field of nursing. Charlie Cullen starts killing hospital patients and the journey into crazy begins. By the end you will have a very different understanding of "risk management" in a corporate setting.
The book is solid, well written, and researched very well. Why did Charlie do it? There is no easy answer. But there is an ironic twist at the end which is so unexpected it will jolt you. there is also a major surprise in the book for Charlie, should he choose to read it.
I really, really liked this book. I hope the author will write another book as good as this one.

Okay, the first page of this book states that Charles Cullen has a bachelor of science in nursing. It does not state from where. All I've been able to find is that Cullen got his diploma from Mountainside School of Nursing, which at that time was only a two year program. So what else can I not believe? He claims he was "honorary president" of his class (after a schoolmate insisted that he run) - but was he?

Charlie considers himself a "talker." But throughout the book he seems to have a lot of trouble carrying on an ordinary conversation.

His father died when he was a baby, and his mother died when he was seventeen. According to this book, she died in a head on collision after having an epileptic seizure at the wheel. What I've read elsewhere is that her daughter, Charlie's sister, was actually driving the car. He becomes angry at the hospital (Mountainside) because someone tells him that his mother's body has already been taken away from there - but it actually was still there. So who told him this, and where did they tell him the body HAD been taken? Did he go look for her body somewhere else? How did he find out her body was still at Mountainside?

He's angry at this hospital, and therefore angry at all hospitals. Is that his motive? To make hospitals look bad? Is that why he became a nurse? Because he does not care about people (some nurses don't). He probably just enjoys being "good" at something. Killing is just an enjoyable side benefit. Any time things get a little rough for Charlie, he attempts suicide. Apparently because he's cried wolf so many times, he's aware that no one will come to his rescue, so every time, he drives himself to the hospital. So why bother, if you know you are going to drive yourself to the hospital? So that they will then stick you in a mental hospital for a short while and you can get a little vacation?

Nurse Cullen goes into Helen Dean's room, and tells her son Larry he has to leave. When Larry comes back ten minutes later, his mother says the nurse "stuck me." He calls in a doctor who says it could be a bug bite! Excuse me, did no one BELIEVE what this woman said?? She died the next day, but the doctors and nurses couldn't have cared less.

Most people seem not to like Charlie. So how did he get married? His wife must have been totally desperate. WHY did she have TWO kids with him? Why did she stay with him for YEARS after she knew how weird and unpleasant he was? How did he get even more girlfriends (not to mention hospital jobs)? He has poor people skills. He does not understand other people. He understands what Charlie wants, and that's it. He goes about things all the wrong ways to get the treatment he desires from others. When it doesn't work out, he just can't understand why. Stalking girls and breaking into their houses scares girls and makes them stay away from him? He thinks he was right, and they are wrong. Does he have Asperger's?

When finally the authorities start to get to the point where they can no longer ignore Charlie's murders, he is interrogated. He does not appreciate this at all. Graeber writes telling what Charlie is thinking - he wonders if he will get caught. He doesn't care if he gets caught. But when he is caught, he doesn't like it. Of course, according to his confession, he only "intervened" by taking someone's life.

This is a weird guy, and apparently has been all his life. There is no getting into his head. I saw him on 60 Minutes and he seems to have a flat affect. He also stammers a lot. When at first he says he did it to put people out of their suffering, he is confronted with the truth, that a lot of the patients were NOT suffering and about to be released, he comes up with that he must have just been overwhelmed. So in other words, it calmed him down to commit murder.

This author does not get much out of Charlie. He is not an interesting fellow. He kills because he likes to see what happens - if the patient dies or not. It seems sometimes it is a personal chemistry experiment. The author writes of a patient's brains exploding. Plus Charlie's anger, his determination to "get back" at the hospital for whatever he doesn't like - being poorly run, in his opinion, for example. He will teach them: by stealing medicine, throwing away lotion, costing them money. Also killing patients. Charlie seems jealous when a patient has a family who cares about him, and comes off as "You think the patient's getting better? I'll fix your wagon, you happy family."

Not to forget: Charlie is a liar. So how much can you really believe what he tells the author? The author writes as if he's in Charlie's head, but I doubt he ever got in there.

Graeber attempts to be cutesy and smart in his writing, which for this subject, with the defenseless victims and their families, is inappropriate. Also, this book had NO photos. As for the footnotes - OVERKILL. I think another reviewer said it - why didn't he just include what he said in the footnotes in the paragraph? It was a pain to keep turning to the back of the book, figuring out which chapter I was in, forgetting the footnote number, looking back at the number and then trying to find it again in the footnotes. Take a hint, Graeber, for your next book. And if there is one, pick a more interesting murderer.

A well written account of these crimes and the mentally disturbed man who committed them. It may be shocking to learn that so many hospitals enabled this killer by failing to report or confront facts to protect themselves. I'm an RN and, while Cullen's case is extreme, I have seen numerous instances of hospitals failing to protect patients from drug abusing or otherwise impaired or incompetent care givers by declining to document facts, report them to licensing boards or give full disclosure references. There have been other Charles Cullens in the medical professions ( including physicians) and there will continue to be until the facilities in which they practice stop putting their reputations ahead of patient safety. Kudos to the brave nurse who helped stop Cullen. It is not an exaggeration to say she risked her own career doing so.

Charles Graeber's true account of one of the most notorious serial killings in New Jersey and Pennsylvania in recent history is a page-turner of a true crime book about Charles Cullen from his humble origins in an abusive household to his sixteen year career as a nurse in various hospitals in the area. I don't know who I'm more angry with the hospitals or Charlie Cullen. The hospitals have a responsibility to their patients and their families. With Cullen's questionable history, he gets hired easily instead of being investigated for various mysterious deaths.

The author does a reasonable good job in presenting the actual true story of Charlie Cullen's life and crimes more like a novel than a fast true crime account in cheaper books. Charlie's crimes went un-noticed for a long time and we'll never know the true extent of his crimes. The book explains his troubled personal life included failed suicide attempts, abusive childhood, and his relationships. You have to wonder why the hospitals' human resources department didn't question his past or investigate from other hospitals.

WOW, this is a disturbing story. Even more disturbing than the crimes of nurse Charles Cullen were the coverups by the hospitals that knew or suspected what he was doing and fired him. Thus they simply booted the problem to another hospital and thus allowed many more deaths. As far as I'm concerned they are criminally culpable even though nobody was ever charged.

This is a great true crime book. The author is an excellent writer and happens to be the only person in the media who was ever granted an interview with the killer. He may be the most prolific serial killer ever. There is no way to know.

I can't believe anyone would not like this book unless the story itself is too disturbing for you to read. Very highly recommended.

I am not normally a fan of true crime works, but this one had me practically panting with frustration (at all the either useless, frightened, or in-denial “authorities” involved) and suspense. The story is about a male nurse who killed an estimated 300 patients over the course of 16 years at an alarmingly wide range of hospitals in NY, NJ, and PA. His technique was often to inject some substance (i.e., insulin) into the patients’ saline or medication bags, in overdose amounts, and then let nature take its course; he also used drugs guaranteed to kill a specific patient (yay for customization). Patients varied between young and old, male and female, and they suffered a variety of afflictions, some entirely cureable. The amazing part of the book to me was the fact that not one of those hospitals – most of whom became aware at some point of his actions and then terminated him – reported any misdeeds, and all forwarded at least “neutral” (if not essentially positive) reviews to the next hospital where he was hired. Thus the awful results of their fear of liability!

As a perfect bonus, the writing is gorgeous. It was wonderful listened to, but I think it would be equally enthralling if read. The epilogue alone was, I think, worth the price of the book.

To write a novel about a guy who supposedly killed 400 people while working as a nurse you would think author would have an easy time including suspense and drama, but alas he sorely fails. Therefore, to me the book comes across as remarkably sterile. It's not COMPLETELY lacking in drama, but there is a gaping hole. I wished author would have done a better job of exploring the social impact of a serial killer operating in a hospital. This, to me, is a big part of the storyline. He does do a good job in relating how Cullen was able to hospital jump and continue his killing--all the time flying underneath the radar. This author is above average and does show some flair so I give it 3 stars.

Apparently, there are more things to worry about than your health when you enter a hospital -- including serial-killing nurses and butt-covering administrators. Graeber's book chronicles the "career" of Charles Cullen, a male nurse whom authorities believe might have murdered hundreds of patients over a 16-year period beginning in the late 1980s. Cullen's spree finally ended when another nurse, a single mother and Cullen's co-worker, agreed to be wired and record her conversations with "good nurse" Cullen, who outwardly seemed a conscientious, if peculiar, caregiver.

I'm not sure why, but "Good Nurse" didn't absorb me the way other true-crime books have, possibly because the soft-spoken Cullen is not particularly interesting; he lacks the killer charisma of a Ted Bundy, Gary Gilmore, or Paul Bernardo. Or maybe Graeber simply fails to shed enough light on his monstrous subject.

If you've read my subject heading, you're most likely wondering why I rated the book at three stars. Here's why: Charles Graeber spent seven years researching to put this work together for readers and the way it came out is truly impressive. One thing I would strongly recommend is, buy an actual copy of the book and not an E-Book version. I say this because The Good Nurse is heavily footnoted. It isn't uncommon to come across 5-10 footnotes per chapter. Moving back and forth through an e-book like that would be extremely annoying. Now, to the three star rating.

The book is divided up into two parts. The beginning where all of the murders happen, and the end where the investigation takes place. At first, I couldn't put this book down. I flew through the first 100 pages like nobody's business, but the last 2/3 of the book kind of drug for me, and I can't exactly pinpoint why. Maybe because the manner in which the murders were explained seemed repetitive and the beginning of the investigation was tough to get through. I don't want to knock his book. I'm glad I read it and the way in which it's laid out for the reader is truly impressive. At the end of the day, the story itself is captivating and the way that Charles Cullen navigated his way through these hospitals killing people is quite disturbing.

This is the story about Charlie Cullen, quite possibly the most prolific serial killer in the history of the United States. He was also a trusted nurse. During a period of several years, Cullen murdered hundreds of his patients, with often hard-to-detect methods like injecting insulin into their IV bags. For years he bounced from hospital to hospital, often attracting suspicion, but never being fully investigated. All the while, more and more people died at his gloved hands. His story is chilling, frightening, and hopefully will never be repeated.
Graeber's years of exhaustive research combine with deft storytelling to create a vivid picture of a very sick and twisted man, a medical system that protected him, and the stories of the brave investigators who finally brought him to justice. It's a tale of the worst in medicine, and worth a read by all doctors, nurses, and hospital administration. Unfortunately, the story does leave a bad taste in your mouth about the practice of medicine.

This book was very well written, frightening to know that a nurse could do this to helpless patients. I would put Mr. Cullen in a category with bullies, injuring those that cannot fight back. But the bigger fault lies with the hospitals that continued to keep him in the system instead of putting him behind bars where he belonged...they should be sued. Some readers have difficulty grasping the intensity of the book at times, because of the medical terminology. As a registered nurse, I can see the complete picture of the madness of this nurse. Hopefully the public will realize that not all nurses are insensitive to patients; that to most of us it is a calling to help the sick and suffering. However the public also needs to understand that they need to speak out when they think they see something that is not quite right..and if they are not heard to go further in action..it may save their life or those of someone else...Peace

I had a special interest in The Good Nurse as one of the hospitals where Charlie Cullen worked (and killed) in is in my local community. Having followed the story closely when it came out, I didn't think there was much new or differnt to learn - and I couldn't have been more wrong.

There are no spoilers per se - it was national headlining news for several months - but the gems are in the details - interviews with the victims' and killers' families, the amazing account of how/why Cullen finally got caught, and background from Cullen himself.

Graeber put in 10 years of exhaustive research, time and effort and it shows. What emerges is a fascinating, cohesive and riveting story behind what many have said is "one of the most prolific serial killers in American history". This book is destined to become a classic (another reviewer likened it to In Cold Blood) - read it for yourself and find out why.

As some readers note, this book takes a while to get going. But boy does it get going. The middle of the book is absolutely harrowing. Because it really happened. This is someone 'credited' with ending approx. 400 lives. That's not a typo. Cullen is crazy. What are the hospitals who hired him using as an excuse? Their behaviour is outrageous. And that should have been delved into a lot more than the author does. Not especially well written, this could have been truly great. Up there with 'In Cold Blood'. But it's not. And the last quarter--strangely enough--really loses energy. The author simply can't bring the noise. He should have teamed up with a real writer. This story deserves it.
If you're already nervous about hospitals, avoid at all costs. Terribly frightening.

What a mess of a book. The author is so busy trying to be the next Truman Capote - In Cold Blood is vastly overrated, by the way - that he forgets to tell his story with any kind of clarity or continuity.

The prose is breathy, overwrought, arty, ridiculously pretentious. The point of view bounces around in a James Joyce-like random walk, which is bad enough in Ulysses and laughable in a true crime book. At least the legions of footnotes are written in a simple and informative style. Unfortunately, you have to consult the notes constantly just to figure out what is going on. That's because the author is more interested in playing style games than in narrating Charles Cullen's stomach-turning crimes in a straightforward, understandable manner. It's sadly true that the Wikipedia article on Cullen gives you a far more accessible and comprehensive view of the case, not to mention the various press articles you can find with a simple Google search.

The only reason I didn't hang the one-star badge of dishonor on the book is the nature of the crimes themselves. The story is so engrossing in a purely evil way that even Graeber can't screw it up completely.

I thought this book was well researched & well written. It certainly held my interest. I was frustrated with the numerous footnotes, too. I actually didn't know they were in the back of the book, until I got to the end, because I was so engrossed in the story. It was definitely a page turner! I was not familiar with this case until I saw the book being released.

I have been a Registered nurse in Texas for almost 40 yrs, & worked in surgical ICU for 20 yrs. I also worked during the same years that Cullen was on his murder "spree." We had a severe shortage of nurses in Texas, as well; especially critical care nurses. I also worked with a nurse that we suspected of "doing something" to our patients, when she covered for us, when we were on breaks. (She also worked the night shift) I was shocked that Cullen literally got away with murder @ multiple facilities for 16 yrs. His methods of poisoning were incredulous & the drugs he used were drugs that I would never have thought another nurse would ever think of using to murder patients. (Digoxin, Insulin, Propanolol,& Lidocaine) We also used a Pyxis, & it never occurred to me to cancel an order, or sign for a medication & then, take another medication that was in the same drawer. I was also taught in nursing school to never give a medication that someone else had drawn up or mixed. Now, I don't know how you could avoid this with the hospital pharmacies mixing the IV fluids, antibiotics, etc... It is chilling to think that a nurse could actually get away with this for that long & not be reported to the board of nursing. I know the BON in Texas is a very powerful legislative organization, as another reviewer previously commented... The hospital where I worked had a more active administration & obviously better quality controls in place, than the facilities where Cullen worked. (There is also a well known "black list" in San Antonio, that facilities use to not hire a nurse suspected of any adverse behavior). Nurses "job hop" from hospital to hospital, so, that would not be suspicious behavior. We are all looking for that "perfect" job. I would have been suspicious of Cullen, from the very beginning, just with the amount of codes that occurred while he was on duty or shortly after he left. There is a case here in TX with a nurse convicted of killing children; Genene Jones. She was an LVN, & worked in pediatric ICU @ a teaching hospital in San Antonio for several years. She also had the "God" complex, & was a societal misfit, like Cullen. She is eligible for parole in 2017, due to a law that was passed, when she was convicted, allowing prisoners "early release" to relieve overcrowding in the prisons. The doctors & several nurses were suspicious of her from the very beginning. I worked with nurses who had worked with her, so, maybe we were a little more astute about this kind of nurse, since it was literally happening in our "backyard." The hospital never reported Genene Jones to the TX BON & she was caught only when she went to work for a new pediatrician, in a small town, & had babies coding in the office after being given routine immunizations. She was injecting Succinylcholine into the babies. "Sux" is a paralytic agent we used to intubate patients. I remember thinking @ the time, why would a pediatrician even have this medication in their office?? I certainly feel for the families who were victims of Cullen, but, @ least he will never see the light of day in this lifetime. It's very scary to think a nurse, especially one working with the very sickest patients, could do something like this, but, even more incredulous that the hospitals never said anything to each other, or reported him to the BON! I think the public needs to be aware that there are good & bad nurses & doctors out there, & it is ok to question them. It certainly opened my eyes! Thanks for enlightening us about this case.

The first few chapters of this book made me cautious. A complete retelling of a serial killer’s life is hard to not make sound like the author is just making shit up. But, Graeber does a great job of keeping the narrative going and noting how Cullen described his feelings. Tying in the facts and known victims with Cullen’s inability to care enough to even remember them shows just how detached Cullen was and does a great job of putting the victims first. It’s easy to tell that this book was incredibly well researched and fact checked. It did, however come off a little tedious and dry at times. A fascinating read and look into this depraved man’s mind.

i loved this book. as a retired nurse i could well understand why other nurses on the units he worked on (at 9 different hospitals over 16 years) found nothing in his care suspicious; especially because he was a more than willing helper and loved to volunteer to do double shifts and extra shifts. THAT'S important to a nurse working on an under staffed unit; not the quirks of a fellow rn hovering a little too long over the med cart or the charting computer.

and I really enjoyed the revelation about the two faced lying/dishonesty of Somerset Medical Center, Charles Cullen's last job, trying desperately not to get any PR about employing a murderer which led to their failure to fire him as soon as their tepid and lackluster internal investigation began (due to the uncommon # of deaths and the huge amount of empty drug vials found in the 'sharps' box), and their 5 month delay before they called in the police AND their baldfaced denial of any pharmacy records being available if the death was over 30 days. This was untrue. The hospital also failed to mention that the computer charting records were available and just "might" help the cops investigate.

All the civil suits against the hospitals were settled out of court but there never was any criminal charges brought.

I hope Charles Cullen - now locked up for the remainder of his life - gets some much needed psychiatric help.

I did think the nurse who was Charles' friend, Amy, and who ended up being a confidential informant (the case could NOT have been made without her help) was psychologically messed up herself and i questioned the legality and ethics of her copying off all these patient records from the computer for the cops. what happened to patient confidentiality? There was never a subpoena or court order for them. She just stealthily took them off the unit. I also thought the author spent too long in adulatory statements; trying, i thought, to make her into some sort of selfless heroine.

The other minor criticism i have is that too much of verbatim interviews with Charlie, both by Amy and by the cops, was included in the book. It got tiresome.

but that aside, i thought it was excellently written and fast paced and suspenseful.

Moved quickly through this book. Had some difficulty keeping up with acronyms but wasn't that interested to find their meaning. But still felt I wasn't getting the whole story. First serial killer book for me. Author obviously spent a lot of time getting their facts straight. I enjoyed the detective part the most part 2. But obviously you wouldn't understand part 2_if you didn't read part 1,

I was completely consumed with this book from the first page to the last - although not necessarily in that order (I had to read all the end notes). I can only imagine the depth of research involved with collecting the details of these events, not only on an operational level, but on a personal level. That said, I think the strongest aspect of the book is not just the collection of facts, events, and emotions, but the well crafted language that brings those elements together.

It's daunting just thinking about the interview process - speaking to people who's lives were so profoundly destroyed by Charles Cullen.

Cullen is described as a man with a troubled past. He was poor, fatherless, habitually abused by men who dated and impregnated his sisters, and distraught by the loss of his mother from a car accident. "He was furious with the hospital that had taken her body, and beyond consolation."

I finished the book in terror, trying to figure out how anyone could have such a cold, removed, matter-of-fact attitude toward homicidal activities. Although Charles Graeber's brief background on Cullen's difficult past gave me some ground, I was still left worrying if I knew someone like Cullen - someone who assimilated in normal society, but in reality was a secret genocidal killer. Scary, to say the least.

Although it's hard to imagine what Cullen's victims have endured, one would only hope that 'The Good Nurse' has brought some resolve to those trying to make sense of how, why and what happened over the years that Cullen was killing innocent patients.

NOTE: The end notes read almost like a story on their own, facts and references alone paint a grim picture.

This book outlines in great detail how the administrators at Somerset Medical Center closed ranks and did everything possible to keep this case out of the public eye. Dr Marcus, Exec directory of the NJ Poison Control Center, was a hero in this book, without him the Somerset execs would have done nothing except push Charles Cullen on to his next assignment. Especially appalling was how the Risk Manager Mary 'Lund' Bollwage (who since then has changed her from Lund to Bollwage) lied to investigators and told them that only 30 days of data was available from the med dispensing system which would have provided a valuable audit trail. This was an an outright lie (see p. 174)and she still works there, a VP no less, absolutely disgusting how the hospital administrators closed ranks. I found the book to be a great read of a sad but true story.

this is the most incredible story i have read in a long time. My friend who works for a hospital has told me that hospital administrators are just about the sleeziest bunch of people you could know, but this really hit it home for me. These admins could have cared less if you lived or died unless it affected their profits and liability. This book has made me actually nervous to ever end up in a hospital! I've work on software systems that have logic to identify "red flags" of people gaming the system - how such a system did not exist (or was not used / looked at) in some of New Jersey's "finest" hospitals, where lives are at stake, is beyond belief. to me, this story was more about the corruption, greed and apathy of hospital administrations than it was about why Charles Cullen did what he did.

This book is a must read!! Charles Graeber did a lot of research and wrote a great story about a very evil man. It's sad to think that a Nurse who is suppose to be a healer was in hospitals killing patients and getting away with it for years. I will never understand why someone feels as if they can play "GOD" but that is exactly what Charles Cullen did. I hope hospitals will learn from this tragedy and monitor workers closely so this does not happen to innocent victims who put their trust in hospitals.I am in the medical field myself and can say that 99.9% of caregivers are there to help and not to hurt patients.
If you like true crime this is a must read!

This book is the very well written, gripping, informative, thought-provoking story of a mentally-ill nurse who is very likely the most prolific serial killer in American history. Hospital after hospital knew or strongly suspected what he was doing - killing patients to satisfy his insane urges - and they intentionally looked the other way, recorded the deaths as natural, and moved him along to other jobs without sounding any alarms to protect themselves from liability. Somerset Medical Center, his last employer, actively lied to police investigators and obstructed the investigation. Only through great police work and the stunning courage of his friend and fellow nurse, Amy Ridgway, who if she were male would have gonads the size of Texas, was he caught and stopped. Otherwise, the hospitals' coverups could have quietly continued, and he could be carrying syringes at a hospital near you.

Mr. Graeber has done us all a great service by telling this story.

As a Registered Nurse in the ER this book was captivating, chilling and a real reminder of how different we as humans can be. I wish there was more information on what drove Charlie to do these things and how he was able to sleep at night. He truly was playing god with lives in the balance and it seems no or little remorse for his very permanent and drastic actions.
True page turner as you are waiting for the moment of discovery.

This is the story of Charlie Cullen, regarded as one of the most prolific serial killers in US history. Charlie is a registered nurse working for a series of hospitals in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and is terminated from each one for strange behaviors and unexplained patient deaths. I thought this book was really well researched and an interesting expose on how detectives track down leads on medical mystery type cases.

This book kept me talking for a while. I am sure my husband knows the whole story by now and never picked up the book. I love that this was not just a by the facts book but included the story within the facts. Really the meat and potatoes of a book. I actually felt bad for Cullen at times, even knowing what he had done in the end. I hope he is getting the help he needs in prison.

This piece of creative non-fiction tracked an amazing path of bodies left by a serial killer, a nurse who killed randomly under some circumstances. What's more telling is how the hospitals covered their butts after suspecting this nurse. They either recommended him for further employment, or at the least confirmed he had worked at their institution. Even the last hospital took specific steps to keep information about this killer from authorities. The story moves from past to present without confusing the reader, and offers scientific explanations that were easily understood. I've read few pieces of creative non-fiction that are so gripping.

Graeber claims he was "the only one Cullen would open up to," so why is there so little of that in the book? Why the kidney donor stuff at the end? Is the author trying to rehabilitate Cullen as actually a good man inside who merely needed to be caught in order to learn the error of his ways? Anyhow, I give the books five stars because it is truly riveting and suspenseful for the most part. One comes out of the reading knowing that the hospitals are to blame for only trying to protect themselves rather than patients. In the end, the author seems almost as creepy as the subject because he seems to condone the sick murder spree (perhaps the longest in history), he's proud for gaining "access" to the killer, and sticks the kidney part at the end of the book when it is essentially irrelevant considering Cullen is clearly a complete psychopath. Then again, it's a "true crime" book, so judgment isn't the author's purview. By reading about this sickness and enjoying it vicariously I end up feeling a tad complicit in the crimes and yet it takes me out of the everyday dullness of existence so it's worthwhile.

The Good Nurse is a page turner. I enjoyed Graeber's prose in part because he made reading about such a chilling murderer palatable.

The book comes to a satisfying conclusion on some levels. ** SPOILER ** Charles Cullen is in jail. There are many civil suits pending. Yet it leaves many questions.
* How can the hospitals get away with this negligence?
* Why does hospital administration care so little for their patients welfare?
* Where were the doctors during all of this? (Perhaps by working night shifts Cullen was able to stay off the radar of the patients' main doctors. Is it an indication of how little time doctors actually spend with ICU and CCU patients?)
* What the hell were his reasons for murder and will he EVER speak of them or are we to just come to our own conclusions?

Graeber throws a cold light on the dark side of nursing and the even blacker motives of the administrations that are just out to protect Hospitals' bottom lines.

I enjoyed the book for the most part. It's a very interesting story and Graeber does a nice job of telling it. His research is very thorough. I only gave it four starts because the end notes were incredibly annoying. They were fairly numerous and some added quite a bit to the narrative but some were totally pointless, but there was not way to know if a note was going to be useful or not without flipping to the end for each one. It really hurt the flow of the book. A lot of the notes should have been worked into the text.

The underlying story is horrifying, but I have never read anything--not even legal briefs--with so many utterly trivial and unnecessary footnotes interrupting what little flow the writing has.

The writing is also far too florid and the narrative very disjointed. There is no insight into the killer. Strangely, there are no photographs. Many obvious questions are not asked, much less answered satisfactorily.

The author did a lot of hard work, but it does not add up to nearly as much as it should have.

I stayed up late at night this past weekend to read it. For me, it was one of those "can't put down" books. It makes me think twice about going to stay in the hospital again. I have many aunts and cousins who are dedicated nurses, but this just gave me the creeps. As an added point of interest for me, my husband went to college in one of the areas where it took place, but he left about 5 years before it started happening.

I have read or listened to dozens of true crime books written by authors who are considered to be the masters of the genre. And almost none of them can hold a candle to The Good Nurse for sheer entertainment value.

As an aging attorney who started out in the District Attorney's office nearly 40 years ago, I am usually irritated to some degree by the non-nuanced manner that the criminal justice system is treated in books, TV shows, movies, etc. But Graeber hits the nail right on the head in The Good Nurse. And he does it all without pandering to the perpetrator, the families of the victims, or the cops who eventually solve the case--a claim that in my opinion can be made by only one other true crime author (Vincent Bugliosi). If there is any justice in the world, The Good Nurse will become a classic like Helter Skelter.

Looking forward to more books by Charles Graeber.

What a great read! The book moved at a good pace tell the story predominantly from Charlie's point of view first before moving to the police and the secret informant. Charles definitely wasn't a grotesque killer like most serials, but his numbers are clearly what set him apart. He's almost likeable. I would recommend this book to anyone curious about true crime.

This book had me on the edge of my seat the whole time. I read a lot of True Crime and normally the investigation and courtroom scene are simply a repeat of information that was given before. I usually end up skimming through. Not so with this book. I only have one complaint. No pictures. I normally see pictures in a nonfiction crime account. There are zero pictures. I ended up googling to see what this guy looks like and would have loved to see some of the nurse that was the informant and the two investigators, although the author does do a great job of describing them.

Generaly not into true crime stories but this is a very good one. Hospital big-wigs pulling down six figure salerys yet willing to look the other way and pretend not to see whats really happening. I enjoyed reading this book although what drove nurse Cullen to commit these murders was never fully ansered.

Captivating and scary, this is the true story of serial killer Charlie Cullen who used his job as an RN to prey on patients. Some say he murdered up to four hundred victims. The author also reviews how the legal protections inside the medical community actually stifled his discovery. The main text of the book is strong. It's the after-story that gets long-winded and weakens the effort.

I bought this book for a friend of mine and she read it so quickly - could not put it down. And having read it I understand why. Charles Graeber has taken on what could seemingly be an impossible task - to tell this truly horrible story without judgement but laying it out in such a way that you are increasingly outraged at the trusted institutions of hospitals and their administration as much if not more than the crimes themselves and the person who caused the death or suffering of a never to be defined number. It takes you into the 'real time' of the events. Fascinating, frightening and leaves you wanting to know more. Recommend it highly.

This is a well written engaging and terrifying book. It is amazing and horrifying that such a person could continue to kill and still be employed and receive clean references to go on and kill again at the next hospital. Shame on everyone who placed hospital reputations and politics ahead of patient safety, and who blocked and inhibited investigations that would have stopped the murders sooner. The book provides interesting information on insights in to the complicated mind of the killer, on police work challenges and diligence, on hospital procedures and also shocking and terrifying data on the extent to which some people and hospital staff will go to cover up crimes to maintain a undeserved reputation.

This is the story of the "Angel of Death" (Charles Cullen), a nurse who was convicted of killing around 40 patients in various hospitals in New Jersey. The book was a big disappointment to me and I was surprised at the long list of reviews that recommended it. The book is overlong, wordy (stilted conversational dialog that goes on page after page after page) and boring. I never got a sense of who Cullen was or what motivated him to commit his crimes.

I read this as a library book and just wanted to add another well deserved 5 star rating.
One of the most astonishing parts of this story is how many people in high level administrative positions in these hospitals tried to cover up what was happening and just get the problem away from their hospitals without reporting anything to police or even the proper state agencies.
This guy even had his picture on an employment recruiting flyer. Highly recommended.

This book started off really good and then slipped into being boring. They talked way too much about hospital politics for me. Alot of which I did not understand. The story also seemed to repeat itself constantly to the point of my checking to make sure I was on the right page and hadn't already read that section. Oh well.

This very interesting story was written by a masterful storyteller. Although there was no mystery, the author neatly decoded the killer's actions to tell the story of an extremely disturbed man. As a nurse myself, I am appalled at the lack of action from the hospitals in which he worked. There is no excuse for putting patients at risk

I would probably rate this as 4.5 stars, but that's not an option. "The Good Nurse" is a well written book and the story is riveting and disturbing on so many levels. Not only is the nurse, serial killer, a terrifically disturbed individual, but the whole hospital system in place at the time was equally culpable. I highly recommend this book. It's a interesting and quick read.

An easy read a page turner a must read for all nurses any healthcare care professional can appreciate the dynamics that are revealed in this blood chilling novel. I found it hard to believe that events like this could have possibly taken place but I realize now how plausible it is.

I think most people will enjoy the book. The only thing I had a problem with is some of the description of how the killer was able to get around the system. This was a systems error. Yes this killer (not nurse) intentionally exploited the system, but even unintentionally it set nurses up to error. The killer in my opinion is not any different than a fireman who sets fires, or a mother who intentionally makes her child sick. Prime example of a personality disorder. Also, could help new nurses/students know what to look for if a peer is abusing the system.

Charles Graeber's "The Good Nurse" is a mesmerizing read, I can't put it down. Name-checking and exposing nearly a dozen hospitals in my hometown area (including St. Luke's, Sacred Heart, Lehigh Valley, Easton Hospital, Hunterdon Hospital, Warren Hospital, and Liberty Nursing Center), Graeber artfully describes with an insider's perspective (he got it all from creepy Cullen himself) the jaw-dropping ease with which "good nurse" Charles Cullen was able to murder maybe as many as 400 vulnerable patients. But the really chilling part is in how the hospitals protected themselves instead of their patients at every turn. I hope Charles Graeber is working on the screenplay because this book and a followup movie promises to be the non-fiction novel event of the decade, at the level of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood." Actor Edward Norton gets my vote to play Charles Cullen. My recommendation: buy this book right now.

I've read my fair share of dark and disturbing books but this one literally caused me to have nightmares three nights in a row. I think the random nature of the crimes described and the ease with which the crimes were committed makes this a seriously terrifying true crime account.

One thing drove me absolutely insane while reading this book: the poor use of footnotes! The author put information in the footnotes that should have been in the body of the text. The footnotes often linked to long passages that was not just supplemental information but were facts that were crucial to understanding the story. Also, on several occasions I would click the footnote only to find a note that was literally a rewording of the already existing text! This drove me absolutely insane!!! I hope to read future works by Charles Graeber but I'm crossing my fingers he learns proper annotating techniques.

Great book. Held my interest to the end. The male nurse, Charles Cullen killed because he knew he could get away with it. The sad part is that he worked and killed at so many hospitals that suspected he was doing this, and none of them would inform the next hospital where he worked that he was a danger to patients. Most hospitals just wanted to get rid of him and avoid negative publicity.

Although this book does have some curse words and nauseating medical details (I'd rate it PG13), it was a fascinating read. I was captivated almost instantly and finished this book in two days. I'd recommend this to a friend who enjoys true stories.

A simply stunning book. And I am writing a review at just the halfway point of this brilliant book. The narrative just switched from Nurse Cullen to the Detectives.

This is going to be the bible of either the Christian Scientists or the Association of Homeopathic Health....I will never look at a hospital in the same way. Like Psycho changed the archetype of Shower, this book The Good Nurse warped the Archetype of Nurse, not since Nurse Ratchet in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOOS NEST has there been a nurse at the nexis of such a combination of psychosis and health care.

Disclosure: I am good buddies withe author.
Second Disclosure: The book is terrifyingly addictive reading

The Good Nurse

Charles Graeber documents evil dispassionately in this true life documentary on the life of hospital shift worker and mass murderer Charlie Cullen. Each page is a compendium of facts that glide together the way a jeweler amasses diamonds before setting them into a climactic diadem. The book has a slow pace with a plot steadily bubbling to a boil. It's a masterwork of rising tension with signs of crackup everywhere. First a dead dog poisoned, children uncared for, important lapses in judgement, and what all first rate real life mysteries have - unheeded clues. Page 43 warrants a special OMG. After a criminal booking for stalking, Charlie is in a sanatarium and gets a call for hospital employment. At that point, Graeber drops one of his bombshells delicately, so that on page 47 we get "of course, George had no idea Charlie was killing people."

Even after administering drugs and failing to make chart notations, even after patient deaths, even after repeated firings, and subsequent re-hirings, the hospital system gave Charlie chance after chance to "improve". The book takes an absurdist turn as patient deaths continue, but Charlie is given a hiring bonus at St.Luke's Hospital, one of the nation's top100 medical facilities. He kills several people there, is caught stealing massive quantities of powerful drugs, finds himself escorted out of the hospital by St. Luke's security personnel whereupon Graber's next masterpiece is unleashed. "Cullen sensed he would like working at Sacred Heart."

No criminal proceedings were ever instituted against any hospital that had hired Charles Cullen.

I bought this book because I frequently visit Somerset Hospital as a pastor and occasionally as a patient. I was pleasantly surprised by the excellent storytelling and well documented facts. I couldn't put the book down knowing just how vulnerable when we place our lives in the hands of a hospital. This book is deeply disturbing yet I couldn't put it down. I'm thankful that there is only one Charles Cullen, and I hope the medical community has learned that "see no evil" is a deadly strategy.

Charles Graeber is a fantastic writer. His depiction of the life and crimes of Charles Cullen is gripping and suspenseful. Graeber achieved a level of insight into Cullen that few true crime writers develop into their subjects. I will be looking for future books by Graeber.

I give this book three stars. I got very confused in places, although I was quite interested in the topic. Happy to say the editing was excellent; very few typos and grammatical errors.

Mr. Graeber gave great insight into the mind of his subject and told a chilling story. As an aside, I discovered, from this book, that my daughter was in one of these hospitals the same time as the subject, and I will probably have to suffer through some bad dreams for awhile.

A fascinating, chilling read. Full of what Colonel Kurtz called: fear and moral terror.

Nurses and health care professionals have a role of trust in any society. But when that trust is misplaced to a wolf in sheep's clothing like Cullen, the results are shattering.

Cullen is among the most prolific serial killers in American history. Graeber's well written account takes us inside the mind of a killer.

I have followed Graeber's work for years now, he seems to find fascination in outliers and rogues of all stripe. His recent Wired magazine cover story on Kim Dotcom was fascinating.

The Good Nurse is chilling and you can't put it down.

A definitely informative source, more appreciated by those in the profession, who know that a few hospitals can find ways to "CYA" of their organization, despite their "patient comes first" advertisements. If I read as a potential patient, well I would be very afraid...

Spellbinding true story. Leaves you still asking: how could someone do what Charlie Cullen did? How did the detectives have the strength to keep on digging for he truth? Thank goodness for their strength! And God bless Amy!

Ultimately unsatisfying. The murderer had mental problems & wanted power over others. I figured that part out way back when the story broke. Nothing really new here except additional details & speculation.

Gut wrenching for the loved ones that a nurse could be so despicable------even more despicable are the hospitals and facilities that did not report him. This nurse worked at dozens of hospitals before being caught.

I enjoyed the book, it was a real page turner. I liked the authors use of fact without a lot of personal opinion added in. The back and forth of reading the footnotes, did distract from the flow of the story a bit. Still well worth reading.

This story is really a page turner. There are chunks of the narrative missing which sometimes was confusing - jumps of time with no transitions and a quick ending without real details about the confession, the trial, or the sentencing. That said I enjoyed the read and the careful detail that explained a pretty complicated situation.

As a nurse myself, I found this book very interesting and I couldn't put it down!! Very well written and gives the reader a better look into the life of Cullen and how the hospitals covered up the incidents to save their business.

This was a great read but much easier to comprehend if you are in the medical field. I happen to be so for me it was a story I
could appreciate ! Charlie is a very sad character but nonetheless, he IS a serial murderer! And Amy the nurse who was friends with
Charlie, had a very delicate path to travel! She is someone I admire very much! All in all I thought it was a great read. The author
did a LOT of research and translated it very well! I also think it shows how hospitals have become BIG business and they are just
worried about the bottom line!!!! Even so much they would protect someone who kills patients!! Sad state for health care to be in!

Starts out strong, and tells an interesting story. But the author goes into a LOT of extraneous detail about things that are not relevant to the story. Goes on a gruesome tangent, for example, about burn victims, treating burns, the pain and agony of burn victims, the appearance of burns and the survival rate of burn victims. This is all unrelated to the killer or his victims. Another example of padding the narrative with unnecessary content is when the author goes into the life history, drinking habits and bad dreams of the confidential informant. How often do we have to be told how "hot" this fellow nurse is, how she is basically a saint for helping the police, and how her tortured childhood haunts her?

One of the best true crime novels I have read. Paints a disturbing portrait of a killer and even more revolting indictment of his accomplices. The hospitals that nurtured him because of the fear of lawsuits. A few brave people stood up against the machine. Truly heroes. A must read.

As a nurse who utilizes a Pyxis and on-line charting (similar to Cerner); this was an easy read. This story relays how hospitals cover things up- repeatedly. And note, I said hospital(S)! Crazy. And the general public should be alarmed- I truly believe Charlie is an anomaly to nursing as a profession. But there are a whole lotta things hospitals "cover up"

This is an amazing story of how money trumps accountability and how a crazy murderer can be passed along from hospital to hospital without any consequences. Even with the store Prime I couldn't wait to read this after the 60 Minutes interview of Charles Cullen so I purchased it for My Kindle. I loved the meat of the footnotes and had no problem navigating back and forth. Especially with a book that you never want to put down. What a story. Time to hold these hospitals responsible for the total lack of responsibility they've shown.

Fascinating true-story that keeps you on edge while you read it (even when you already know the ending). Brings up many questions about not only psychopaths, but the institutions that protect said nuts in order to protect themselves.

I gave this 3 stars because it is an ok book. I wouldn't say that this is the best book.
I found some things very interesting but felt the book was too slow and repitive.
It leaves more questions than answers. It shows how easy murder is in the medical world.

There are no drill instructors in the Navy and also no medics. Several medical issues as well. The story is well told for the most part but you didn't care enough to get it right. As a former Corpsman that is now an RN the problems made it hard to read at some points.

I like to read true crime books. Most are not written by exceptional writers and this one is no exception. But the facts were well presented and it held my interest. Of course I would love more insight into the serial killer's motives, but so would everyone involved in the case.

I enjoyed the book. Ay times it got bogged down by jargon. I would have found it helpful to be able to access the footnoted information as the chapters went along. The footnotes seem to contained information the author felt was important to the story. I have never read anything with so many footnotes and found it distracting. As a RN having worked in multiple ICU's it was fascinating.

Having humble respect for my profession, and for the women and men who serve beside me, this burdens my heart...as we touch lives when we are so needed someone else takes lives under the cloak of 'Nursing'. May we be more vigilant, for we are the guardians at the gate.

As a mother of two children who have a serious heart disease, one of which just had a heart transplant and required the CVICU team, this book is terrifying! Beyond the murders though, the way the hospitals ducked their heads was beyond horrible - they should have been indicted too.

As a former reporter covering the Charles Cullen case on the Pennsylvania side, I found myself fascinated and frustrated at the motives and methods of this prolific serial killer nurse and the courageous attempts by other nurses who tried to stop him in spite of risks to their own employment and safety. Graeber, the only reporter to whom Cullen granted an interview following his arrest and conviction, tells the story well, with surprises even to veterans involved in the case. I read every word and still wanted more. Thank you Charles Graeber, Amy, Tim and Danny for not giving up.

The reason lodged by other reviewers for purchasing the paper version (footnotes) prompted me to do so; I wish that I hadn't. The footnotes are not necessary to umderstand/follow the plot. The book is awesome, by the way.

Really enjoyed this read until the last 50 pages. His detailing of the medical drugs and equipment with such clarity made the work of Cullen even more realistic and frightening. What didn't work for me, as a reader, was the final act beginning with the confession to Amy. It's as if Graeber got tired or lost interest because the medical aspects weren't really important anymore and just wanted to finish the story. What a shame! It could have been compelling throughout.

This is an excellent book that I was unable to put down! I found it very fascinating because I have a background in medical investigations, however, that is certainly not required to enjoy this well written book.

It would be so frustrating to not have records or the cooperation of his past employers. It's scary to know that this can happen a lot more and you wouldn't have the support of the hospital. Disappointing.

This was an amazing story, one that will cause you to watch closely and ask questions if you ever need hospitalization. It's a captivating story when you realize this nurse got away with murder for years with perhaps a hundred patients. Very well written!

For people in the medical field, this is an inspirational story to relate to . This will be an incessant reminder to all the healthcare providers the caring and giving they provide to all patients, their job will always be appreciated no matter what the circumstances may be.

The case this book is based upon was very interesting. I would have given a higher rating, but the writing was just so-so. There was a lot of fluff it seemed, and I got bored with it several times. Not sure i would buy it again.

very good read. Always interested in medicine and caring for people,this book had a real attraction for me. But very scary as to what one single person could do as a nurse to a patient. Very well written ,kept my interest.

Very poignant depiction of unfortunately what goes on in healthcare, not only with nurses, but with physicians as well. Hopefully, stories like this will revolutionize our industry. Well written, quick read, very creepy

Poorly written, poorly organized. The author has conscientiously found almost every document available referring to Cullen, but doesn't seem to realize that he never ties anything together or provides any interpretation or insight. We never get any explanation of why Cullen did what he did, which surely is the ONLY reason to read this book!! Considering the subject, this book is unforgivably dull.

Will be always referred to as "better than the movie" as far as the inevitable blockbuster. Graeber is an animal of a writer. Couldn't put this down and took off a day of work to read it, calling in sick because it seemed that important while holding it at the time. A true original writing about what will go down as one of the most horrifying and twisted people to ever walk the earth.

this was one of those books that, from the beginning, it's so OBVIOUS what is happening, but people just go la la la la la and totally let this person literally get away with murder even though he does it right under their noses and could have been stopped at least a million times, but his obviousness is just looked over and over and over. i hate books like this...i truly regret having wasted my money on it...and the time it took to read it!!!!!!

all broken up more like notes or newpaper clippings. Story did not flow well .It would be better if told different format. Hard to explain did not like the way it read. Did not finish book . What a waste of money.