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"The American Agatha Christie," as she is sometimes called, Mignon G. Eberhart has a huge following among mystery buffs. Her adroit style and penchant for chilling atmosphere are evident in The Patient in Room 18, her literary debut of 1929. It introduces the emphatic Nurse Sarah Keate, who helped popularize mystery novels and movies set in hospital wards amid the ominous gleam of medical instruments. Eberhart once said of the redoubtable, red-haired Nurse Keate, "I loved her because she had show more a good sharp tongue." The head nurse needs all her wits in The Patient in Room 18, which begins off-duty with an unpleasant dinner party and mixes radium with murder, drawing in the cunning Detective O'Leary, beautiful Maida with the lapis lazuli cufflinks, and sinister Corole. show lessTags
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3.5 stars, this is definitely of its time, so the commentary on the people of color present here is alarming now. Fortunately that doesn't play a huge role, and the actual mystery is excellent and classic. An old hospital ward with a room no one wants to stay in because of what happened there. Complete with a plucky nurse heroine.
The first book by America's Agatha Christie, published in 1929, stars the sharp-tongued Nurse Sarah Keate.
The board of St Anne's Hospital has just spent $65,000 on a gram of radium, the latest treatment fad. It has been strapped to the chest of the patient in Room 18. The patient dies and the radium disappears. Nurse Keate helps the detective, Lance O'Leary, solve the crime.
Suspects pop in and out of Room 18 as though they were in a French farce.
This was a bit on the racist side. Corole, cousin of the head doctor, "does love clothes and finery. It is on account of her - dark blood." She traces her lineage to "a cannibalistic royal line" and "she likely has a streak of savagery.....the beat of tom-toms would stir her, for instance. She show more is apt to be rather indolent, too...."
Fortunately there are no tom-toms within hearing distance of St Anne's. Eberhart creates a menacing enough atmosphere without them.
Entertaining suspense. Nurse Keate is an appealing character. show less
The board of St Anne's Hospital has just spent $65,000 on a gram of radium, the latest treatment fad. It has been strapped to the chest of the patient in Room 18. The patient dies and the radium disappears. Nurse Keate helps the detective, Lance O'Leary, solve the crime.
Suspects pop in and out of Room 18 as though they were in a French farce.
This was a bit on the racist side. Corole, cousin of the head doctor, "does love clothes and finery. It is on account of her - dark blood." She traces her lineage to "a cannibalistic royal line" and "she likely has a streak of savagery.....the beat of tom-toms would stir her, for instance. She show more is apt to be rather indolent, too...."
Fortunately there are no tom-toms within hearing distance of St Anne's. Eberhart creates a menacing enough atmosphere without them.
Entertaining suspense. Nurse Keate is an appealing character. show less
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Author Information
94+ Works 2,890 Members
Mignon G. Eberhart was born on July 6, 1899 in Lincoln, Nebraska. She studied English and history at Nebraska Wesleyan University. Her first novel, Patient in Room 18, was published in 1929. During her lifetime, she wrote more than 50 novels and numerous short stories including While the Patient Slept, House on the Roof, Hasty Wedding, With This show more Ring, Three Days for Emeralds, and Dead Yesterday and Other Stories. She received the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1971 and the Agatha Award: Malice Domestic Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1994. She died on October 8, 1996. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Awards and Honors
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Doubleday Crime Club (1929.12)
Work Relationships
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Patient in Room 18
- Original publication date
- 1929
- People/Characters
- Sarah Keate
- Related movies
- The Patient in Room 18 (1938 | IMDb)
- First words
- St. Ann's is as old hospital, sprawling in a great heap of weather-stained red brick and green ivy on the side of Thatcher Hill, a little east and south of the city of B----.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)And I avoid the closed, mysterious door of Room 18.
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Statistics
- Members
- 92
- Popularity
- 348,852
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.23)
- Languages
- English, Italian
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 7
- ASINs
- 7
