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“Graeber doesn’t pull punches… A deeply unsettling addition to the true crime genre.” —Publishers Weekly
“[Graeber] imbues the story with an intense level of anticipation, with one question constantly in the background: Who will stop this man and when? A thrilling and suspenseful page-turner that is sure to be loved by the majority of readers, who will be both horrified and fascinated.” —Kirkus Reviews
Over the course of his sixteen years, Charles Cullen had been the subject of dozens of complaints and disciplinary citations, and had endured four police investigations, two lie detector tests, perhaps twenty suicide attempts, and a lock-up, but none had blemished his professional record. He’d jumped from job to job at nine different hospitals and a nursing home, and been ‘let go,’ ‘terminated,’ or ‘asked to resign’ at many of them. But both his Pennsylvania and New Jersey nursing licenses remained intact, and each time he filled out a new application, Nurse Cullen appeared to be an ideal hire. His attendance was perfect, his uniform pristine. He had experience in intensive care, critical care, cardiac care, ventilation, and burns. He medicated the living, was the first code responder when machines screamed over the dying, and exhibited origamilike artistry when plastic-wrapping the dead. He had no scheduling conflicts, didn’t seem to attend movies or watch sports, and was willing, even eager, to work nights, weekends, and holidays… His fellow nurses considered him a gift from the scheduling gods, a hire almost too good to be true. —From THE GOOD NURSE
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 April of 2007, 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 (TWELVE; On-Sale Date: April 9, 2013) 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.
Charles Graeber has written for Wired, GQ, The New Yorker, New York, Outside, Bloomberg Businessweek, and the New York Times, among others. His work has received numerous awards including the 2011 Ed Cunningham Award for outstanding international journalism from the Overseas Press Club and a New York Press Club prize. Born in Iowa, he lives in Nantucket, MA, and Brooklyn, NY. For more information, you can visit www.CharlesGraeber.com.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:Beyond the physical and biological effects that have taken a toll on those in recovery from addiction, a wide range of emotions can begin to emerge even after sobriety takes hold. Often these are feelings that until now were either suppressed or dealt with by self-medicating with alcohol or other drugs. Women new to sobriety are especially prone to this emotional turmoil and—according to Beverly Conyers in her new book THE RECOVERING HEART: Emotional Sobriety for Women (Hazelden Publishing; 978-1-61649-437-7; $14.95; June 25, 2013; Original Trade Paperback)—must address it in order to grow and flourish.Conyers, author of the recovery classic Addict in the Family, describes in THE RECOVERING HEART how the seeds of insecurity are planted early on for women in our culture: on one hand, we are expected to be nurturing, pleasant, and wholesome. On the other hand, pornography permeates our culture and degrades the value of women. We are expected to be chaste and at the same time sexually proficient. We are told it’s our minds, not our bodies, that matter, yet we are judged by our physical attractiveness.
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