"Isolation Ward"

Martine Bailey studied English Literature while playing in bands on the Manchester music scene. She qualified in psychometric testing and over her career, assessed staff for a top security psychiatric hospital and dealt with cases of sexual abuse and violence. Having written historical crime fiction, Bailey's writing has jumped to a modern setting.

Bailey applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Isolation Ward, with the following results:

If a random reader opens Isolation Ward on page 69 they’ll get a good idea of what the book is about. Psychometrics expert Lorraine Quick is at Windwell Hospital, about to give a team-building workshop to a group of hostile strangers, including the new Director, Doctor Voss, and a bulldog of a Chief Nurse, Brian. Just minutes earlier, Lorraine and Doctor Voss discovered the hospital Administrator murdered in a seclusion cell. And now, Lorraine reaches for her session notes and finds they’ve gone missing:

…she always used her notes as a prop, a prompt to speak lucidly to a group. And now, with Kevin’s corpse at the forefront of her mind, she couldn’t remember a single word of what she’d prepared.

‘And so, it’s over to you, Lorraine.’ Voss was eyeing her with an encouraging, though rather strained, expression.

The room fell silent. Brian’s small eyes fixed on her, in anticipation of sport. She smiled and nodded, wondering if she looked as hideously nervous as she felt. The silence continued…

Lorraine’s work is based on my own experience in the UK’s National Health Service. In Lorraine’s first book, Sharp Scratch, she identifies a killer at her hospital using personality testing. The most hostile groups I faced were often in Psychiatry, including senior consultants and psychologists. To have faced them without my session notes might well have set off a panic attack, if not a cardiac arrest!

Lorraine is made of stronger stuff. She realizes that a crafty psychopathic inmate must have pickpocketed her notes. So, using intuition rather than logic, she dredges up an idea based on the real crisis they are all facing – the tragic loss of the hospital’s Administrator. She makes an off-the-cuff proposal that:

…while the police begin their preliminary investigation, we use this session to discuss the impact of Kevin’s death on the hospital.

To Lorraine’s relief another member of the team responds by unloading her shock and emotions. Now Lorraine can guide the group from hostile paralysis towards a shaky plan for the hospital to cope.

So, the Page 69 Test shows how Isolation Ward takes the psychological thriller a stage further by using the tools of psychology – group work, psychometric profiling, and dealing with grief – to work with different personalities and ultimately, to solve crimes.

Visit Martine Bailey's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

My Book, The Movie: An Appetite for Violets.

The Page 69 Test: An Appetite for Violets.

My Book, The Movie: A Taste for Nightshade.

My Book, The Movie: The Almanack.

My Book, The Movie: The Prophet.

Q&A with Martine Bailey.

--Marshal Zeringue