The Last High
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.
Daniel Kalla
Daniel is an Emergency Room Physician and the bestselling author of fifteen novels, translated into eleven languages. His Shanghai Trilogy has been optioned for film, and his works explore themes ranging from superbugs and pandemics to psychedelics and DNA evidence.
In addition to psychological thrillers and medical suspense, Daniel has written three historical novels about the 20,000 German Jews who found refuge in WWII-era Shanghai. His latest novel, The Deepest Fake, follows a tech CEO whose life unravels amid deepfakes, deception, and a potentially fatal diagnosis.

