THE LAST SAMPLE

One sample. One chance to challenge the record.

When a cyberattack disrupts pathology services across London, emergency consultant Ruth Calder is already dealing with the consequences. Then an injured woman arrives at A&E clutching a canvas bag and pleading with the staff not to hand it over to a man who might come looking for her.

The woman calls herself Nina. Her real name is Alice Fenwick, and the bag contains a research specimen that someone appears determined to divert before it can be examined.

As routine systems give way to handwritten requests and improvised safeguards, Ruth finds herself caught between the demands of urgent patient care and a troubling series of altered instructions. A clinical trial is under scrutiny. Patients need answers. And the records that should establish what happened cannot all be trusted.

Detective Inspector Mara Quinn follows the evidence. Ruth has a different duty: to act on what she knows, protect those in front of her and refuse to certify what she cannot verify.

Set against the real-world disruption of London's pathology services in June 2024, The Last Sample is a tightly observed medical crime thriller about trust, responsibility and the human cost of a changing record.