The Good Nurse

A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder

By: Charles Graeber

Narrated by: Will Collyer

Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

Coming to Netflix this fall starring Eddie Redmayne and Jessica Chastain⁠—a “stunning book...that should and does bring to mind In Cold Blood” and takes you inside the mind of America's most prolific serial killer, whose 16-year long "nursing" career left as many as 400 dead. (New York Times)

After his December 2003 arrest, registered nurse Charlie Cullen was quickly dubbed "The Angel of Death" by the media. But Cullen was no mercy killer, nor was he a simple monster. He was a favorite son, husband, beloved father, best friend, and celebrated caregiver. Implicated in the deaths of as many as 300 patients, he was also perhaps the most prolific serial killer in American history.

Cullen's murderous career in the world's most trusted profession spanned sixteen years and nine hospitals across New Jersey and Pennsylvania. When, in March of 2006, Charles Cullen was marched from his final sentencing in an Allentown, Pennsylvania, courthouse into a waiting police van, it seemed certain that the chilling secrets of his life, career, and capture would disappear with him. Now, in a riveting piece of investigative journalism nearly ten years in the making, journalist Charles Graeber presents the whole story for the first time. Based on hundreds of pages of previously unseen police records, interviews, wire-tap recordings and videotapes, as well as exclusive jailhouse conversations with Cullen himself and the confidential informant who helped bring him down, The Good Nurse weaves an urgent, terrifying tale of murder, friendship, and betrayal.

Graeber's portrait of Cullen depicts a surprisingly intelligent and complicated young man whose promising career was overwhelmed by his compulsion to kill, and whose shy demeanor masked a twisted interior life hidden even to his family and friends. Were it not for the hardboiled, unrelenting work of two former Newark homicide detectives racing to put together the pieces of Cullen's professional past, and a fellow nurse willing to put everything at risk, including her job and the safety of her children, there's no telling how many more lives could have been lost.

In the tradition of In Cold Blood, The Good Nurse does more than chronicle Cullen's deadly career and the breathless efforts to stop him; it paints an incredibly vivid portrait of madness and offers a penetrating look inside America's medical system. Harrowing and irresistibly paced, this book will make you look at medicine, hospitals, and the people who work in them, in an entirely different way.

©2013 Charles Graeber (P)2013 Hachette Audio

Fantastic Book.

Super well written, and the narration is extremely well done.

Fascinating story about a really twisted, enigmatic little man.

Highly recommend this, as well as the Netflix movie and Doc.

Solid - but VERY dark and distressing

This book should really come with a major content warning for intense depictions of suicide, self-harm, and abuse. It is among the darkest titles I have ever read. Story is wild and generally well-told. A bit more literary embellishments than there needs to be. Performance is good but a bit odd with variety of voices from the narrator.

As an RN myself, I found this deeply disturbing.

The fact that he could move from one hospital to another w/o difficulty was so troubling. Hospitals should have been responsible for documenting questionable incidents so no worker could
continue behavior like this job to job.
This book and the narrator were excellent!!

Wow. Descriptive, thrilling, insightful.

A surprisingly insightful, well researched and articulated book into the lives of Charles Cullen and the “good nurse” who helped bring him to justice.

Good book, poor narration

Well written, detail-oriented story but hard to get past the mispronunciations in the narration. The narrator did not even pronounce the name of Charles Cullen correctly--the psychotic nurse of the story, His name is "Cullen" not "colon". QRS complex is not ORS complex. The abbreviated name for Digoxin is pronounced "dij" not "dig". Ugh. I'm almost finished the audiobook, but so aggravated with the narrator that I had to come here to specially address it in a review. The narrator and editor really blew it with this one.

did they not proof the narration?!

it's a great book. being a nurse myself, I was interested in this story. but seriously, the narration could be better. if you're doing a specific voice for the person, saying "she said" or "he said" after EVERY single line is redundant. and the fact that for part of the book Dig as in Digoxin is pronounced wrong but in other parts it's correct. and it's QRS not ORS. how was that not corrected prior to publishing?
rant over.

Not the real meat of the story. Flawed narration.

Any additional comments?

The tough questions weren't addressed. Why did he slip through the medical and mental health care system after all those suicide gestures? How does the threat of lawsuits rule the decisions and policies of hospitals? Those are the real stories of import to our society, completely ignored. And the "dig" flaw in narration is no small point, someone made a bad decision to let this go to market as is.

Quick read and enjoyable too

I have to admit I had not heard of Charles Cullen and this was a very enjoyable nonfiction book that I would recommend to true crime lovers!

Buy and read this book immediately!

Having been a Registered Nurse for the better part of 30 years, I was keenly interested in the subject matter of this book. I found the story to be terrifying not only from my perspective as a professional but as a patient. I don't want to say much more because I'd rather not spoil the story but I would recommend this book to everyone. The book is well written and the story so compelling that you will not want to put it down.

Great story, okay narration

The beginning of this book was a little repetitive with how the killer went about harming his patients but after getting to part 2 where they described the investigation and how he was caught, I was absolutely hooked. The narrator mispronounces numerous medical words (if he said hep-a-rin one more time I felt like heaving my phone through the wall). But all in all, definitely worth the listen.