Great thriller which kept me turning the pages well into the night. Great characters and plot. Highly recommend to others!!

House of Correction is a new thriller from husband and wife team, Nicci French. I love their stories and unique style of writing. In this latest novel Tabitha Hardy is accused of murdering her childhood abuser. Without an alibi or memory of the horrific events, Tabitha finds herself incarcerated and all alone. Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for my digital copy.

This is a gripping thriller. I loved the shifts from Court room to prison. Like all good thrillers you are taken on a ride of twists and turns.

Book blurb...

‘So,’ said Mora Piozzi, her lawyer, looking down at her laptop. ‘In brief: you are charged with the murder of Stuart Robert Rees, on December 21st, between the hours of ten-forty in the morning and half-past three o’clock in the afternoon.’

Tabitha is accused of murder. She is in prison awaiting trial.
There is a strong case against her, and she can’t remember what happened on December 21st.
She is alone, frightened and confused.
But somehow, from the confines of her cell, she needs to prove everyone wrong.

My thoughts…
I was so frustrated by the main character - Tabitha - I wanted to keep her locked up and throw away the key!

That said, the story was engaging and kept me reading to the end; if only to find out who did commit the murder.

An intriguing plot with so few possible suspects it made me wonder who committed the crime and why.

Despite my opening sentence, a recommended read.

EXCERPT: ... now the person who had abused her was dead. Mr Rees the maths teacher. Stuart Rees her neighbour. The pillar of his little community. His body in her shed, his car parked outside, his blood all over her.

She bit her lip so hard that she tasted iron in her mouth. She put her hands over her eyes to make the darkness darker. She couldn't remember that day, or only a few snatches. It had been a day of wild weather and of a crouching fear. The kind of day that she had to crawl blindly through, just to get to the end.

What had happened? Why had he come to her house and why had he died and what had she been doing?

Her solicitor believed she had murdered him. What did she, Tabitha Hardy, believe? She didn't know. She didn't know, and not knowing tipped dread through her like poison.

She didn't know what to do. She had no idea. She had no one to turn to and the night went on and on and on and when morning came she still didn't know.

ABOUT 'HOUSE OF CORRECTION': 'So,’ said Mora Piozzi, her lawyer, looking down at her laptop. ‘In brief: you are charged with the murder of Stuart Robert Rees, on December 21st, between the hours of ten-forty in the morning and half-past three o’clock in the afternoon.’

Tabitha is accused of murder. She is in prison awaiting trial.
There is a strong case against her, and she can’t remember what happened on December 21st.

She is alone, frightened and confused.

But somehow, from the confines of her cell, she needs to prove everyone wrong.

MY THOUGHTS: Tabitha is a difficult character to like. She is depressed, angry - sometimes to the point of violence - and quite hostile towards the people in her village. She doesn't have friends. But then she has been through a lot - seduced/raped at the age of fifteen by the man she is accused of murdering, she never told anyone at the time. She has had spells in psychiatric hospitals. She is medicated. She struggles to live any semblance of a 'normal' life.

All the evidence seems to point to her, even the CCTV footage. Tabitha at times doubts her own innocence. She doesn't think she did it, killed Stuart, doesn't think she is capable of it, but can't be certain...

Nicci French has written a 'locked room' mystery set in a small coastal English village. There is only one road in and out which, on the day of the murder, was blocked by a fallen tree. So we have a limited pool of suspects, none of whom, other than Tabitha, appear to be in the right place at the right time.

I became absorbed by her case. She has fired her brief, who believes her to be guilty, and elects to defend herself against all advice. Her defence is haphazard and stumbling. She constantly erupts in the courtroom, doing herself no favours. She has the feeling that she is missing something, something important that dances around the periphery of her mind but that she can't quite grasp...

There are plenty of twists in this story, none of which I saw coming. At the beginning, I wasn't entirely convinced that Tabitha hadn't murdered Stuart, yet I was busy trying to work out who else could have killed him right through to the end. Believe me, I suspected almost everyone in the village at some point.

House of Correction is a read that will set your 'little grey cells' humming. While I can't say that I liked Tabitha by the end, I had certainly grown to admire her.

An interesting and absorbing read with a cast of interesting characters. Definitely recommended.

⭐⭐⭐⭐.2

#HouseofCorrection #NetGalley @niccifrenchauthor
#contemporaryfiction #crime #legalthriller #mentalhealth #murdermystery #psychologicalthriller

THE AUTHOR: Nicci French is the pseudonym of English husband-and-wife team Nicci Gerrard (born 10 June 1958) and Sean French (born 28 May 1959), who write psychological thrillers together.

DISCLOSURE: Thanks to Simon and Schuster via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of House of Correction by Nicci French for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

For an explanation of my rating system please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com

This review and others are also published on Twitter, Amazon, Instagram and my webpage

How can you prove that you are innocent? Tabitha knows that they will realise that she isn’t guilty and that she will be able to go home soon. But things don’t turn out that way and everyone seems to believe that she killed Stuart Rees. Why doesn’t anyone believe her? Yes she had a reason to want him dead as he did rape her when he was her teacher. She thought that she was special to him but he just threw her aside. She knew it was a mistake to move back to the town but she had nowhere else to go. She knows that someone will realise that this is all a big mistake and she won’t be long in prison. But she realises that she will need to find the proof herself. Can she fight her demons with the help of a former inmate? But who killed him? He had lots of enemies it seems. A good read. I was lucky enough to receive a copy from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for my honest review?

When Tabitha Hardy and her handyman Andy find the dead body of maths teacher Stuart Rees in her shed late one night, she is accused of his murder and placed on remand awaiting trial. Tabitha has been suffering from episodes of depression and mental illness most of her life and has no clear memory of what happened that day. She certainly doesn't remember killing anyone, but the police believe it's an open and shut case as she had a motive for killing him and no one else in the village was seen to go towards her house that day.

Although Tabitha protests her innocence, her lawyer doesn't believe her and advises her to plead guilty to manslaughter, so Tabitha decides to defend her own case despite knowing nothing of the law and court procedure and with the inherent difficulty in talking to witnesses and gathering information while in prison. She also has the problem that she has not made any attempt to fit in to the village and make friends, despite growing up there and recently returning to live.

This was a bit of a change of pace for the Nicci French writing team, but made for a suspenseful read. The first half of the novel deals with Tabitha's time in remand and her attempts to put together what happened that day. At first she is a difficult character to like, being moody, hostile and often angry, however French manages to make us like her as she starts to understand herself and some of the factors that may have shaped her. Her grittiness and determination also start to win her some sympathy. The second half of the novel takes us in to the court room where Tabitha is clearly naive to think she can represent herself in court against experienced prosecutors and was lucky to have a patient judge (who allowed her more leeway that would likely be allowed in reality). This did provide some humor as Tabitha blundered her way through questioning the witnesses, assisted only by her unlikely support person, Michaela, a friend from prison. Overall, an engaging and suspenseful read featuring a very unique main character.

I have been a huge fan of the Nicci French duo ever since picking up THE SAFE HOUSE a couple of decades ago. Ever since then, I have greedily devoured everything they have written, and have never been disappointed. I was beyond excited to get the opportunity to review an ARC of their latest novel, HOUSE OF CORRECTION, and am happy to report that the winning streak is continuing!

If you mourned the end of the Frieda Klein series as much as I did, then you will be happy to hear that Tabitha, the protagonist of French’s new book, has been created in the same mould as Frieda. Tabitha is a loner, she has no filter between her brain and her mouth, she is prickly and a bit of a loner and whilst Frieda walks for hours to clear her head, Tabitha prefers a swim in the icy ocean. Having returned to her old hometown, which holds few good memories for her, Tabitha still finds herself an outsider, shunned by most of the villagers. So it’s not a big stretch for them to immediately point the finger at her when one of the village’s stalwarts is found brutally murdered, his body disposed of in Tabitha’s garden shed. The police are more than happy to agree that Tabitha not only had the opportunity and means, but also a motive for the murder. Even her own solicitor doesn’t believe her when she proclaims her innocence. So Tabitha does the unthinkable – she fires her solicitor and plans on defending herself in the murder trial. She has only a few weeks to find enough evidence to clear her name – from her prison cell.

I’m not sure what exactly it is about French’s writing that perfectly hits the mark for me, but as soon as I started reading I knew that this was going to be another winner for me. With its claustrophobic small town setting and cast of characters who all seem to have something to hide, the clock was ticking for Tabitha to find a way to break out of jail. On the day of Robert Rees’ murder, the village had been cut off from civilisation by a fallen tree, narrowing the cast of characters to the ones who had been trapped in town. This gave the book an old-fashioned closed door mystery feel I loved! As Tabitha discovers evidence, one clue at a time, I was not only cheering her on but felt as if I was playing detective with her. I love books where I am just as much in the dark as the main character – someone I am not even sure I fully trust. The stage thus set, I settled in for the ride.

Again, the French team have created a mysterious, aloof and yet compelling protagonist who may even keep her readers at arms’ length, and yet still wormed her way into my heart. Perhaps you will find Tabitha unlikeable and prickly, but I bet you will fight in her corner, even though one small part of you will suspect that she is not telling the full truth. Is she? That’s something you will have to find out for yourself.

All in all, with HOUSE OF CORRECTION, the French writing duo have continued their winning streak for me. Perhaps it was the claustrophobic setting, or the ticking clock, or the closed-door mystery style writing, but I sat up all night reading and don’t hesitate giving it a full five stars. It’s a book that will appeal to readers who enjoy a slow burning, character driven mystery that slowly unfolds, clue by clue, keeping you guessing until the end. I can’t wait to find out what the duo will come up with next!

Tabitha Hardy is in prison, on remand and awaiting trial for the murder of Stuart Rees - her neighbour and former teacher. More importantly, he had sexually abused her when she was 15. Tabitha had only recently returned to the village she grew up in, Okeham, after inheriting some money and using it to buy a cottage in the village to renovate. When her court appointed lawyer encourages her to plead guilty to manslaughter to cop a lower sentence she fires the lawyer for not believing in her innocence and then decides to defend herself. No one is happy with this decision and Tabitha makes a real dog’s breakfast of it all.

This book was quite long and extremely slow in the first half. We spend a lot of time in Tabitha’s head and it’s not a pleasant place to be. It’s not that she’s evil or bad, rather that her thoughts are so chaotic and unstructured and annoying. She is a very prickly, angry person and at the same time she was muddle-headed, confused, forgetful and unable to concentrate and so on. A lot of that can be attributed to the sexual abuse which I think she had repressed until her conviction brought it all up again. Also, clearly being in prison and representing herself in court was giving her a lot of stress. None of that changes the fact though that it was boring to read about. So Tabitha was unlikeable, but by the end of the story I was left feeling that just about everyone in the village was thoroughly unpleasant.

The story, however, was really good. Even though I didn’t like Tabitha I was rooting for her. The courtroom scenes had some humour along with all the awkwardness of Tabitha’s defence. Prison life was depicted in a way that I thought was realistic although, as I have never been to prison, I don’t know for certain. A bit more brevity and a bit more action in the first half would have lifted this book immeasurably. Many thanks to Netgalley, Simon & Schuster and Nicci French for providing a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Tabitha is on trial for the murder of Stuart Rees, a teacher who had sexually abused her as a 15 year old school girl. When her lawyer advises her to plead guilt to second degree murder, Tabitha decides to mount her own defence without having a clue how to go about it.
This novel was a far cry from the usually excellent books that Nicci French writes. I found it quite boring at the start and the trial was almost a farce, Here’s hoping there will be more Frieda Klein novels instead of more like this.
#houseofcorrections #netgalley

“Tabitha had heard of those dreams where people find themselves on a stage, not knowing the lines, not even knowing what the play is. She had never been on a stage and she had never dreamed about being on stage, so she had never understood the anxiety behind it. She understood now.”

House of Correction is the fourteenth stand-alone novel by British writing duo, Nicci French. In a cell in Crow Grange prison in Devon, on remand for the charge of murder, Tabitha Hardy is bewildered. It is true that the body of Stuart Rees, dead from multiple stab wounds, was found in the shed in her back garden; it is true that Tabitha had his blood on her when the police came; it is true that many believe the history Tabitha has with Stuart constitutes a clear motive for murder.

But Tabitha’s memory of the day is clouded: she was deep in a depressive fugue and can recall only snippets: “She felt like the last fragments of memory were flowing away like water through her fingers”; she simply can’t believe, though, that she could have murdered a man without remembering that she did so. Nor is she the sort of person who would commit murder; both surely convincing arguments for innocence?

Of the possible pleas she can make (not guilty, guilty of manslaughter, guilty with diminished responsibility) her court-appointed solicitor maintains that pleading guilty of manslaughter will result in the best possible outcome. But Tabitha has one very compelling reason to ignore that advice in favour of a not guilty plea.

Can Tabitha, a freelance copy-editor of science texts, really conduct her own defence?

At first, Tabitha seems to be hopelessly out of her depth and the challenges she faces seem insurmountable, given her lack of expertise, her confinement, her initial reluctance to request help, and her social ineptitude. But she is surprised to discover there are people who want to help her, perhaps the nearest thing to friendship she has ever encountered.

Sometimes Tabitha seems to have good insight into her own behaviour; at other times, she seems woefully naïve. But ultimately “The events of the past months had shone a bright and unforgiving spotlight on how people saw her: as plain or even ugly, as mannish, weird, ridiculous, dysfunctional, angry, pathetic, capable of killing someone.”

Initially the story seems a touch bleak, perhaps tragicomic, with a sense of foreboding, until the courtroom scenes are reached, when the reader may be surprised to find themselves exclaiming, laughing out loud and cheering in what must be the most entertaining courtroom scenes since that Australian classic movie, The Castle.

These authors are so skilled at both characters and plot, they easily have the reader rooting for the underdog despite what sometimes seems like (perhaps naïve) self-sabotage, and keep the reader guessing right through to the final pages. The sense of powerlessness that must be felt by any first-time prisoner, and all the tiny factors that lead to it, are expertly depicted. This is a cleverly-plotted murder mystery, full of intrigue and thought-provoking themes, but also darkly funny and hugely entertaining.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Australia.

House of Correction is an intriguing psychological thriller which shifts between the confinement of prison and a courtroom drama.

Tabitha Hardy is accused of murdering her neighbour Stuart Rees within a week of moving back to her small, remote hometown of Okeham, England. Stuart has been found fatally stabbed in Tabitha’s yard.

Tabitha has a blurred memory of the day of the murder. She doesn't fit in and is not liked by the community, she’s a loner and all the evidence appears to point to her. She is arrested and sent to prison on remand until her court case is heard.

After firing her court appointed lawyer, although advised not to Tabitha decides to conduct her own defence in court and sets out to solve her case from the confines of prison.

The story was filled with twists and turns, it’s well written and cleverly plotted, with a smidge of delightful humour. I wasn’t fond of the protagonist at first but I started to warm to her and her feisty nature as the story evolved. A recommended read for those that love a courtroom drama and a twisty outcome.

I wish to thank NetGalley and Simon & Schuster UK for an advanced copy in return for an honest review.

I will admit this is my first book by Nicci French and I definitely look forward to reading more! House of Correction is a great courtroom drama that definitely had me going back and forth about whether the main character Tabitha was guilty or not! The pace of the book was great (I like short chapters) and I found myself not being able to put it down because I just needed to know the outcome of the trial. I didn't necessarily like any of the characters (Tabitha for example is someone you love/hate throughout) but was still compelled by the twists and turns of their stories which had me quickly turning the pages. A great read!
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A big thank you to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster Australia for this advanced digital copy to read and review!