“It’s not the patients you should worry about. It’s the staff you should watch out for. ”

Ship of Fools comprises twenty short stories, one for each year the author worked in the mental health system. These stories are fiction, but they are based on the real world of psychiatry and maximum security institutions. Written from the point of view of a staff member, the author lifts the lid on psychiatry, that secret domain. There are vivid accounts of life and death, of betrayal and redemption.

“They had drawn low cards in the lottery of life to get mental illness in the first place and then they had us to deal with on top of that.”

Rod Madocks is a full time writer who spent twenty years working as a mental health professional, including time in maximum security forensic institutions. He is the author of No Way To Say Goodbye, which was shortlisted for the CWA/ITV Crime Thriller Awards in 2009. He has a PhD on the work of Vladimir Nabokov and lives in Nottingham.