Ross Pennie Books In Order

Publication Order of A Dr. Zol Szabo Medical Mystery Books

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Ross Pennie is a biography and memoir, mystery and thriller author, professor, jungle surgeon, infectious disease specialist and pediatrician from Ontario, Canada. After graduating with a doctor of medicine degree in 1976, he became an infectious diseases specialist in a career that spanned more than four decades and took him all across the world. Between 1991 and 2012 he would work as a professor, researcher, and specialist physician at McMaster University. He would then move on to work as an infectious disease MD at Brantford’s General Hospital. During his tenure at the hospital, he treated all manner of patients from long haul truckers, hockey stars, outspoken nuns, warrior clansmen, and doughnut addicts. During his long career, he has dealt with every type of infection from flesh-eating Streptococcus to Falciparum malaria.

Pennie got interested in writing from a very young age when he went on a solo trip across the Canadian Rockies and Prairies and wrote about it in his journal. Before he started writing fiction, he made his name with “The Unforgiving Tides,” an award-winning memoir he wrote about Papua New Guinea. The memoir’s charm and grit continue to delight readers years after it was published. After early retirement from his career as a medical doctor, he got into writing when he published his debt medical mystery title “Tainted.”, It was a novel set in Hamilton Ontario and went on to become a critically acclaimed novel that would spawn the “Dr. Zol Szabo Medical Mystery” series. His novels have been known for their textured plotting, relatable characters, and insights into the frustrating and often meticulous work that goes into the solving of a medical mystery. Ross currently lives with his wife and two children in Ontario, very near to the locale where his lead character Szabi and his team of epidemic fighters live.

Ross Pennie’s “Tainted,” the first of the “A Dr. Zol Szabo Medical Mystery” series is set in Hamilton. When food supplies keep on getting contaminated, public health doctor Zol Szabo and an infectious disease specialist named Hamish Wakefield are charged with finding a solution. With the new epidemic dominating the news cycle, their superiors want them to determine the cause of a mysterious outbreak before more people die. They are in a race against time but still have to navigate the dangerous political minefields of dealing with the media and the medical community as the infection spreads unabated. The situation becomes more complicated when an investigator appointed by the government makes some egotistical decisions that threaten even more lives. The fast-paced medical thriller speaks to modern concerns on food safety and shows how pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers may put the lives of people in jeopardy if they are left to their own devices. Ross draws from his experiences as a public health practitioner in showing the disastrous nature of outbreaks and the consequences it has on the social and economic lives of ordinary people.

“Tampered” by Ross Pennie opens to a residence for wealthy seniors being struck with a bout of food poisoning. The residence is filled with people with powerful political connections and others with very generous pensions. The public health doctor assembles his team and sets out to investigate the cause of the mysterious infection. But finding the source of the contagion proves difficult and with the body count ever increasing, it is inevitable that someone close to Szabo would be infected. When his friend goes down with the illness, he calls in microbe connoisseur Hamish Wakefield who has made a name for himself for sniffing out exotic diagnoses. While Hamish is successful at unearthing other dangers, cracking the bigger puzzle proves difficult. It takes the sharp-eyed octogenarians to expose what is happening at the residence. It is an intricately plotted and fast-paced novel with a gripping mystery that gets the story from the realm of medical mystery into medical thriller territory.

Ross Pennie’s “Up in Smoke” is the story of unexplained deaths in a high school in the Ontario tobacco belt. The deaths, all of which are from liver failure have resulted in widespread panic and Dr. Zol Szabo an investor of epidemics is called in to look into it. His initial investigations suggest that the tobacco may have something to do with the multi-millionaire king of the illegal tobacco trade nicknamed Badger, who manufactures his product at the Grand Basin Indian Reserve. But when some responders from the local fire department start showing symptoms of the mysterious disease, Zol decides to confront the millionaire manufacturer. He is repulsed by the man’s lust for ancient artifacts, money, and blood but the authorities are afraid of the man’s Native Influence and tell the investigator to stop digging into his activities. Emboldened, Badger continues to sell his contaminated cigarettes all over the state as he executes several witnesses and stalks Zol and his family. Will the investigator be able to find a solution before things get out of hand?