#BookReview ‘Poppet’ by Mo Hayder

About the book…

The Beechway High Secure Unit in Bristol, England, has a storied past—first as a nineteenth-century workhouse, then a poorhouse for the homeless, and now as a psychiatric hospital. With that troubled history come superstitions like the Maude, believed to be the ghost of a sadistic workhouse matron.

But while some of the patients and staff think the Maude is behind a series of unexplained episodes of self-harm amongst the ward’s patients, nursing coordinator AJ LeGrande thinks they might be the work of an all too human horror—a homicidal patient who was released back into the public in error.

Calling on Det. Jack Caffery, LeGrande hopes his investigation will reveal what’s truly been going on inside and outside the hospital’s walls. But what Caffery discovers about former patient Isaac Handel is beyond anyone’s imagining.

‘Poppet’ by Mo Hayder was published by Random House inprint Transworld in 2014, and I am so grateful to them for approving my review request via Netgalley. It is the 6th in the Jack McAffrey series, it can be read as a stand alone novel but I personally feel it makes more sense read in order, as there are overarching threads of plots that whilst a casual reader can pick up on, it speaks to the development of Jack and the characters which are in his orbit since Book 1, ‘Birdman’.

The reason I picked up ‘Poppet’  from my Netgalley backlist, which I am trying to get through as best i can, is because this novel kept popping up on list after list of books that people had not been able to finish due to its gruesome nature. I have read several of Mo’s novels and whilst they are absolutely not for the faint of heart, and can be said to re-define the detective genre, I looked for and found Poppet, and steeled myself …

It is a gruesome novel which deals unflinchingly with the way in which mental health services are distributed in the UK, how those who work within it face challenges forced upon them by a wider society who wants it’s mentally impaired locked out of sight and out of mind. And in the case of The Beechway, it provides secure accomodation, or does it provide an echo chamber for those staff who are as easily damaged as the inmates? Who is exploiting whom?

There are those int he management structure who use The Beechway as a steeping stone to higher things, the inmates seen more as test subjects an numbers than real people, whilst those who have every day contact with the population of the hospital, manage the worst and most damaged that society has deemed irreparable.

There is a dual narrative between A.J, one of the Beechway staff and Jack, as he investigates a dual line of inquiry into a missing person from the previous novel, and also the vanishing of an inpatient who has been released years after a horrific crime he committed as a young boy.

The possibility of redemption and rehabilitation is discussed within the remit of the investigation into how the criminal justice system supports-or rather doesn’t-those who are paroled after spending so much of their lives in institutions . Monster Mother is just one such character who alternately brings out the compassion in the reader for what she has been through, as well as challenging you perceptions on mental illness.

It is peopled with the truly disturbing and broken characters who are haunted by a possible urban legend known as ‘The Maude’, a  past patient or nurse who is alleged to sit on patient’s chests and steal their soul and their life. Added to this, power outages seem to coincide with either escaping patients, or ‘suicides’ which should be, technically, impossible. As Jack re-opens several of the recent deaths at the Beechway and works with A.J to uncover exactly what is going on in this crumbling edifice to Victorian shut away attitudes to the mentally infirm, this gothic setting takes on a major role as a character of its own.

The paint jobs and renaming of the wards cannot hide the indelible stains of a throwaway society that does not know how to treat what could be considered to be the most vulnerable of our numbers.

‘Poppet’ straddles that fine balance between the supernatural element, a gripping police procedural and a gothic mystery at its heart, all contained within the Beechway’s haunted corridors.

About the author…

Mo Hayder left school at fifteen. She worked as a barmaid, security guard, film-maker, hostess in a Tokyo club, educational administrator and teacher of English as a foreign language in Asia. She had an MA in film from The American University in Washington DC and an MA in creative writing from Bath Spa University UK.

Mo lived in Bath with her daughter Lotte-Genevieve. She was also the actress Candy Davis, who was most known as the blonde secretary on “ Are You Being Served?”

She very sadly passed away in 2021.

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