Is a project I’ve worked on for over 15 years and I still haven’t got it right. It’s a psycho thriller that one the January top slot on Youwriteon, in 2006.

The tale centres around the age-old  question. Can hypnosis be abused to the point where it is easy for the hypnotist to rape and murder his victims. Every practising hypnotist in the world will say, no. My researches turned up a different tale.

While the opening stood on YWO, a psychologist commented n it saying it was bullshit I never responded. I didn’t have to. I have enough evidence of wrongdoing and convictions of hypnotists to blow him out of the water.

Why hypnosis?

In the early 1990s I was diagnosed with ankylosing spondulitis. Damage to the soft tissues of my upper neck. I tried non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and found I suffered a severe reaction to them. I could do nothing about the problem so I had to deal with the pain, and I learned to use mind power. That led me naturally onto hypnosis, and I became so involved in the subject that I too a course in hypnosis.

I even practised as a therapist for a short time, yet I had absolutely no medical qualifications permitting me to do so. It highlights the starling laxity in uk law that anyone can do this and there was a recent incident, logged on the BBC website, where one man registered his pet cat as a hypnotherapist.

The logic behind this is that hypnosis is a palliative and not dangerous. Wrong, is what I say, and so does Alex Croft, the hero of my novel, as he fights his way towards a serial killer who has been hypnotising his victims and raping them over long periods of time, and now has Croft’s partner, Trish, held captive.

The novel runs adult themes and contains scenes that some readers my find distressing.

In the extract that follow, Croft receives a cryptic note that leads him to the Handshaker’s next victim.