The Insanity Inspectors

1858. The first Lunacy Commissioners are appointed.  Their task is a difficult one, for not every lunatic can be classified as insane and not everyone who is insane is a lunatic.  

These ‘insanity inspectors' travel the country, deciding who can stay at home and who needs to be committed to one of Scotland’s new asylums. 

Dr Lennox Cameron, a new inspector, juggles his time between his role of inspecting the shocking conditions in which many lunatics live in the Scottish Highlands, and living with his opportunist uncle and aunt, scheming their way into Edinburgh's polite society.

Lennox will pay a price for being an honourable man, choosing purpose over achievement as a physician.

Dr Peter Baird has darker motives for treating the insane.  He has found a reliable way to profit from lunacy.  In the end he will pay a very different price.

This story is based on real cases and true events.

Reviews:

 “The Insanity Inspectors is astonishing, and it conjures up an immersive impression of the period.  Martin Campbell provides a fascinating glimpse into a time of transition in this exhaustively researched novel.” The Herald 

 “The book is indeed unusual, remarkable, but also riveting.  Campbell’s unique voice carries the reader forward, craning to hear a hushed conversation in a gentleman’s club in Edinburgh one moment and then reeling from the screams of the insane in the Scottish Highlands the next.  Highly recommended.” Rona Simmons, author of A Gathering of Men