Ben Dafoe, a young emergency-room doctor and part-time crime-scene consultant for the Seattle police department, is haunted by addiction. Two years earlier, a cocaine habit claimed the life of his identical twin, Aaron. Now Ben walks onto the scene of a savage stabbing to learn that the victim, Emily Kenmore, is his former fiancée—another loved one who fell prey to addiction. Among the carnage in Emily’s bedroom is a streak of blood on the wall that belongs to the killer. When the DNA from that sample matches Ben’s blood, he becomes the prime suspect.

Convinced that his identical twin is alive and somehow involved in Emily’s death, Ben frantically hunts for his brother Aaron while trying to evade American and Canadian authorities. But someone is desperate to thwart him. A Seattle mob boss, a dirty cop, and a smooth lawyer are only some of the people Ben has to navigate. While Ben struggles to solve a tragic mystery from his past to clear his name in a crime of the present, he learns that sometimes blood lies.

From internationally bestselling author Daniel Kalla comes a riveting thriller about online body shaming, toxic diet pills, a vulnerable mega-celebrity, and a rapidly rising body count.

When Owen Galloway, the track star son of a prominent US senator, is found dead of an overdose in his bedroom, LAPD Detective Cari Garcia suspects that he’s just another teenager who hid a drug addiction.

In Vancouver, Dr. Julie Rees, an experienced toxicologist, notices a growing number of overdoses among the eating disordered and body builders, and mentions it to her boyfriend, Detective Anson Chen.

Then Rain Flynn, a famous pop star and social media influencer, dies in her Vancouver hotel room showing the same symptoms of a fatally high fever and uncontrollable seizures as Julie’s other ER patients, including the coowner of a wildly popular wellness center with locations in both Vancouver and LA.

After an autopsy confirms that Rain overdosed on illicit diet pills containing a deadly toxin known as DNP—an explosive agent originally used in the trenches of World War I—the media gets hold of the story and runs wild with it. But who’s behind the online marketing and distribution of DNP? And how is the wellness center connected? The daunting challenge of putting the pieces together falls to Detectives Garcia in LA and Chen in Vancouver. Can they solve these crimes before DNP becomes the next viral TikTok challenge?

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER

In this riveting novel from international bestselling author Daniel Kalla, a Vancouver doctor and a detective face the deadly consequences of the opioid crisis as they track down the supplier of fentanyl that landed a group of teens in the ER with critical overdoses.

Deliberately or not, they must’ve been poisoned…And if it happened to them…

There will be others.

Dr. Julie Rees, a toxicologist and ER doctor, is stunned when her emergency room is flooded with teenagers from the same party, all on the verge of death. Julie knows the world of opioids inside and out, and she recognizes that there’s nothing typical about these cases. She suspects the teens took–or were given–fentanyl. But why did they succumb so quickly?

Detective Anson Chen is determined to find out. He and Julie race to track down the supplier of the deadly drugs. But the trail of suspects leads everywhere, from unscrupulous street dealers to ruthless gang leaders who hide behind legitimate business fronts and the walls of their mansions.

As Anson and Julie follow clues through the drug underworld, Julie finds herself haunted by memories of her troubled past–and the lover she lost to addiction. When other overdoses fill the ER–and the morgue–Julie realizes that something even more sinister than the ongoing fentanyl crisis is devastating the streets. And the body count is rapidly rising.

A gripping thriller, The Last High explores the perfect storm of greed, addiction, and crime behind the malignant spread of fentanyl, a deadly drug that is killing people faster than any known epidemic.