Author Guide · True Crime & Medicine
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Charles Graeber was a medical student and researcher before he became a journalist, and both of his books come from inside medicine. The first is about a nurse who killed his patients for sixteen years while the hospitals that suspected him passed him on to the next one. The second is about doctors who spent a century trying to turn the body’s own immune system against cancer, and finally did. A contributing editor at Wired who has also written for The New Yorker, GQ and Outside, he takes years over each book. This guide covers both, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 2 key books · 2013–2018 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Charles Graeber has written two books: The Good Nurse (2013), about the serial killer Charles Cullen, and The Breakthrough (2018), about cancer immunotherapy. Start with The Good Nurse; it is the one Netflix filmed in 2022.
Where to Start with Charles Graeber
If you like true crime
→ The Good Nurse (2013) — and how institutions let it happen.
If you want hope rather than horror
→ The Breakthrough (2018) — the science that won the 2018 Nobel Prize.
Both Charles Graeber Books, in Order
The Good Nurse
Charles Cullen worked as a nurse at nine hospitals in New Jersey and Pennsylvania over sixteen years, and at several of them colleagues suspected he was killing patients. Instead of calling the police, the hospitals eased him out, and he moved on. He was finally caught with the help of a fellow nurse, Amy Loughren, and convicted for twenty-nine murders; the real number may be far higher. Graeber spent six years on the case and is the only reporter Cullen has spoken to in prison. Filmed by Netflix in 2022 with Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne.
The Breakthrough
The long story of cancer immunotherapy, from William Coley injecting bacterial toxins into tumours in the 1890s, through a century of failure and scorn, to the checkpoint inhibitors and CAR T-cell therapies that began to work. It came out weeks after James Allison and Tasuku Honjo won the 2018 Nobel Prize for the discovery at its centre, and it was shortlisted for the British Medical Association’s Medical Book of the Year. Written for readers with no science, through the patients and the researchers.
In What Order to Read Charles Graeber
The two books have nothing to do with each other except medicine, so read whichever subject draws you. Most readers come to him through The Good Nurse, often after the film, and it is the more gripping of the two.
The Breakthrough is the better book to give someone who is ill, or who loves someone who is: it is about doctors who refused to give up, and it ends in real progress.
Reading order
1. The Good Nurse (2013)
2. The Breakthrough (2018)
The years · 2007–2022
Quick facts about Charles Graeber
- Known for
- The Good Nurse, his investigation into Charles Cullen, the nurse who killed patients at hospital after hospital, filmed by Netflix in 2022
- 2007
- “The Tainted Kidney”, New York magazine
- 2013
- The Good Nurse
- 2018
- The Breakthrough
- 2022
- Netflix film and documentary
- Born
- In Iowa
- Before journalism
- A medical student and researcher, with papers in scientific journals
- Writes for
- Wired, where he is a contributing editor; also The New Yorker, GQ, Outside and The New York Times
- Honours
- Overseas Press Club award; The Good Nurse nominated for an Edgar Award
- On screen
- The Good Nurse (2022) and the documentary Capturing the Killer Nurse (2022), which he executive-produced
- Lives
- Nantucket and Brooklyn
The red mark is 2013: The Good Nurse, the six-year investigation that made his name.
How Charles Graeber Writes: Inside the System
Graeber’s subject in both books is less a person than a system. The Good Nurse is the story of a killer, but its real question is how nine hospitals let him keep working: staff raised the alarm, administrators worried about lawsuits, and Cullen was quietly let go with a neutral reference. Graeber lays out the record and lets readers judge the hospitals for themselves.
His medical training shows. He can explain an insulin overdose or a T cell without talking down, and he understands why doctors and hospitals behave as they do. The Breakthrough uses the same skill in the other direction: a century of researchers who were dismissed by their own field, and the patients who were saved when the science finally caught up.
He takes his time. The Good Nurse took six years and depended on getting Cullen to talk, which no other reporter managed; The Breakthrough was supported by a fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Two books in more than a decade, and both of them still read as the definitive account of their subject.
Watch
Charles Graeber on The Good Nurse
Charles Graeber talks to New Bedford radio station WBSM in 2014 about The Good Nurse and the nurse Charles Cullen, who killed hundreds of patients. From the official WBSM 1420 AM channel.
Frequently asked questions about Charles Graeber’s books
How many books has Charles Graeber written?
Two: The Good Nurse (2013), about the serial killer nurse Charles Cullen, and The Breakthrough (2018), about cancer immunotherapy. His magazine journalism has also appeared in several Best American anthologies.
Is The Good Nurse a true story?
Yes. It is the true story of Charles Cullen, a nurse who worked at nine hospitals in New Jersey and Pennsylvania over sixteen years and was convicted for twenty-nine murders, and of Amy Loughren, the fellow nurse who helped police catch him. The 2022 Netflix film is based on the book.
How many people did Charles Cullen kill?
He was convicted for twenty-nine murders, but nobody knows the true number. Cullen himself first recalled about forty, and estimates run into the hundreds. Graeber has said that we will never know how many people he killed.
Is the book The Good Nurse better than the film?
They tell the story differently. The film focuses on Amy Loughren and the weeks before the arrest; the book covers Cullen’s whole career, the hospitals that let him move on, and Graeber’s own conversations with him in prison.
What is The Breakthrough about?
Cancer immunotherapy: treatments that get the body’s own immune system to attack tumours. It runs from William Coley in the 1890s to the checkpoint inhibitors and CAR T-cell therapies of today, and was published weeks after James Allison and Tasuku Honjo won the 2018 Nobel Prize for that work.
Did Charles Graeber go to medical school?
He was a medical student and researcher, and co-wrote scientific papers, before he turned to journalism. That background is the source of both his books.
Footnotes
- Charles Graeber — Wikipedia
- The Good Nurse (book) — Wikipedia
- The Breakthrough — Wikipedia
- “Pretending to Be a Good Nurse” — NPR, 2013
- Bio — charlesgraeber.com
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“We’ll never know how many people Charlie Cullen ultimately killed.”
— Charles Graeber, speaking to NPR in 2013
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