Some people think I am a marvellous doctor. Others think I am the work of the Devil. So said Dr William Sargant, the doctor whose controversial methods brought him to the forefront of British psychiatry in the 1960s and into the nightmares of many of the patients, mostly women, on whom he practised. The Sleep Room that gives the book its title was Ward Five of Londons Royal Waterloo Hospital, where Sargant Will to his friends; Bill the Brain Slicer to his critics set to work on vulnerable patients, using techniques ranging from huge doses of antipsychotic, sedative and antidepressant drugs, to electro-convulsive therapy, to lobotomy. For Sargant, the brain was best fixed with physical treatments, but his approach left his patients, who were treated without consent, facing a lifetime of trauma. Several died under his care. Stock lets the victims speak for themselves, with five chapters dedicated to their first-person accounts:Sometimes I go to the depths of despair for no reason, says one, decades after her time in Ward Five. With The Sleep Room, Stock, the author of six spy novels and five psychological thrillers, has written a book as gripping and haunting as any fiction.