Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this eARC.

Rabbit Hole is a novel of suspense that takes the reader inside an acute psychiatric ward, where a former police officer, Alice Armitage, tries to solve a series of murders among the patients. But Alice is not a reliable narrator, as she suffers from PTSD, addiction, and psychosis, and she doesn't know who to trust, including herself. Mark Billingham creates a claustrophobic and tense atmosphere, where the line between reality and delusion is blurred, and the stakes are high for Alice and the other inmates. He also tackles the issues of mental health, trauma, and justice, with empathy and insight. Rabbit Hole is a clever and compelling thriller that will keep you guessing until the last page...

First standalone by Mr Billingham I've read in a while, and it was a nice change of his normal Tom Thorne series. Recommended if you are looking for something a little different.

Yowzers, poor Alice Armitage is in a bad place. She’s in a psych ward and is trying to piece together her past and present all at once. She ended up in the ward, because of PTSD as a former police officer. Self medicating and drinking are partly to blame. A break down has caused her long term visit and she can’t come to grips with it. Her daily narration of the happenings on the ward are priceless. She has had a breakdown but she seems to really understand the other patients. She has pops of reality and has lapses of sanity. I love how you can’t always tell her state of mind. Things seem to be going alright until a fellow patient is killed. Alice immediately goes into Police Officer mode. She can’t focus on anything else and she needs to call former PO friends. The pool is small on who she can call on and it holds her investigation up. While trying to figure things out she comes even closer to another break down. It’s as if she doesn’t know what is real and what is imagined but I was hooked either way. I had to see how this ended. Was Alice right about her investigation, was she close or was she just crazy. Was any of it real or was she delusional about it all. I love a good suspense story and this was very good. I couldn’t help but root for Alice.. I wanted her to be right.. I was invested and you can’t ask for more than that in a book. This was a four star read for me. I want to thank Netgalley & Mark Billingham for my copy for an honest review.. It. was my pleasure reading & reviewing it.. I hope you enjoy it too!!!

It took me so long to twig on the twist/premise. Well done Mr Billingham and a chilling insight into the lives of the institutionalised

A locked room mystery, an unreliable narrator and a psych ward. Three components of the new book by Mark Billingham. This book was a fascinating premise to me but unfortunately just didn’t deliver in the way I wanted. It was a slow moving, complex plot that had characters I just couldn’t get behind. The bright point was the description of the day to day in the psych ward, it made for some entertaining fodder. 3.5 rounded up. Thank you NetGalley and Grove Publishing for providing me with an ARC in return for my honest review.

A change of pace for the mighty Mark Billingham and a very different offering from the more familiar fare. This more esoteric approach will not sit well with most, or even the majority ! Of his army of followers, but it seems perfectly acceptable to try a different emphasis. Yes it’s a crime novel but with much more concentration on psychological aspects than found in the traditional crime novel.

Being a hidebound traditionalist and a boring old fart, my preference is for a less radical approach but I would urge you to try it, after all Mr. Billingham is incapable of writing a bad novel.

4.5 "fascinating, complex, oddly poignant" stars !!!

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and Grove Atlantic for an e-copy of this book. This was released August 2021. I am providing my honest review.

Wow ! I have faith again in psychological mysteries (not a ridiculous thriller here!)

Alice (Al) Armitage is in an intermediate treatment ward in London for mental health and addiction treatment. We are told she has PTSD, substance misuse issues and intermittent paranoia (is this truly her diagnosis?) She is a former copper (is she or isn't she?) Her life has fallen apart and she ends up mandated to have long term treatment for her mental illness and anti-social behaviors (is she a criminal as well?)

We are told this story completely in first person. Alice is spunky, funny, irreverent. She also has a mean streak and is manipulative. Sure she must have a personality disorder as well (does she?) A fellow patient is murdered and Alice feels that her former colleagues are not doing their jobs. She investigates, interviews, sets up tests. Throughout all this she gives her perspectives on the other patients, the doctors and nurses and how she views the outside world including her parents and ex-boyfriend.

Alice is the ultimate unreliable narrator but as a reader we become so certain of her reasoning and skills that we question who is mad? who is bad? what the fuck is going on ?

Despite the suffering that goes on in the ward we witness so many strange and hilarious antics both before and after the murder of the patient but then a couple of weeks later a nurse is murdered....

Truly horrid as Alice is the one that tries to save her. Alice is disintegrating and becoming increasingly psychotic (is she really?)

A fuckin amazing story that kept me at the edge of my seat and made me question the nature of reality and the nebulousness of mental health assessment and (lack of ) treatment and rehabilitation....

This is a book that truly delivers the goods in one of the best mysteries that I have read in a very long time.

Kudos to the author for also infusing this book with compassion and poignancy for those that have to contend with mental illness themselves or witness it in their loved ones.

Call me crazy (pardon the pun), but I love books that are set in a mental ward. Shutter Island was my first introduction to it, and more recently The Silent Patient. Both are fantastic books in my opinion, and I look for books to reach the same heights.
This massively missed the mark for me. It was slow, and I struggled to connect to the characters in the way I wanted.
The patients on the ward were too stereotypical for me, and some medical conditions needed much more research for them to be believable to me.
My first Billingham book and doesn't really entice me to read his others.

Alice (Al) Armitage previously worked in law enforcement but is currently confined to a psychiatric facility as the pressures of the job and the loss of her partner culminated in her abusing drugs and alcohol. A patient on the ward is murdered and Alice convinces herself that the police are in need of her help in the investigation.

I've read and liked quite a few of Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne novels but this standalone is very different. The story was slow moving but I enjoyed the book on the whole and liked Alice's descriptions and nicknames for the other patients and staff. The book has its dark moments but also quite a bit of humour and had me guessing (wrongly!) what was real and what was imagined. The title is quite apt. It's not a book I would recommend to everyone but worth reading. 3.5 Stars!

Many thanks to Grove Atlantic via Netgalley for a chance to read an ARC of this novel which was published in August 2021. All opinions expressed are my own.

3.5 The rabbit hole this Alice goes down is the local psych ward and I can't think of a better place to feature an unreliable narrator. How Alice come to be here we find out as the story progresses and we also meet the other patients on the ward as well as the nurses. These characters grew on me, some more than others, as we find out their particular stories. For Alice, called Al, she soon becomes embroiled in an investigation taking place on the ward. When a patient is found murdered, she becomes frustrated that she is not allowed to use her police skills and the detectives are not taking her seriously.

A unique scenario and place, some dry humor and a character one can't help but pull for make this an interesting, though albeit long read. I seem to be having problems with ending lately in the books I've read and the who in this who done it I felt rather anticlimactic. There was one revelation though that surprised me and made sense of what came before. So mixed for me but worth reading for the novelty if the setting and characters.

ARC from Netgalley.

Rabbit Hole Mark Billingham
Totally different to his usual books

I have read a lot of books by this author and generally enjoy them all and particularly enjoyed his last book which I also reviewed.
However although this book was very cleverly written the subject matter just did not interest me and I thought the plot, such as it was, meandered on for too long.

Alice Armitage is an ex-police officer, who was present at the brutal killing of her partner and subsequently had what we used to call a nervous breakdown. She has been committed to the Psychiatric ward of Hendon Community Hospital amongst a group of people all with their own problems. When not only one inmate of the ward but also a member of staff are murdered, Alice is determined to solve the murders herself using her previous experience. However whilst she is trying to solve the crimes she is also fighting against her own demons and trying to survive surrounded by a group of people who all have problems of her own.
The actual descriptions of the various individuals in Shackleton unit are very sad but often funny at the same time but I struggle to get any enjoyment out of people’s mental health problems. I know that it is one of the biggest problems facing our society today but somehow although the author’s skill at writing shines through, this just was not a book for me.

3 stars


Dexter

Elite Book Group received a copy of the book to review

Two stars, unfortunately. I’m a big fan of Mark Billingham and his Tom Thorne thrillers, and I was definitely intrigued by the premise for his new standalone, Rabbit Hole. Even though I’ve devoured all the Thorne books I’ve read so far, I had a hard time getting into this one. It just seemed to drag along, and I never clicked with the protagonist (or any of the characters to be honest). I’ll be first in line for the next Thorne, but unfortunately this one just didn’t do it for me.

Thanks to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for the opportunity to read and review Rabbit Hole.

An interesting psychological thriller, unfortunately the narrator and I didn’t get along too well and that made reading this book take a lot longer than expected. I kept putting the book down and doing other things instead of getting immersed in the story. However I do think it was an entertaining read and don’t regret having read it.

Big thanks to NetGalley for the digital copy.

Alice has been sectioned into the psychiatric wing of a hospital following a breakdown. Of course, one could not hope for a more unreliable narrator, and she certainly proves to be that.

There is a murder on the ward - one of the patients is found smothered by his pillow. The police come in to investigate and (un)luckily for them, Alice is ex-Job so she lends a hand. She thinks she’s uncovered something that the police have overlooked and when a second murder follows, Alice starts spinning ever more elaborate conspiracies.

But that’s not really what this book is about, in fact the murder mystery is really just the McGuffin to hang Alice’s narration on. She breaks the fourth wall to address us, though it’s never clear if she has an audience in mind or if it’s just part of her health issues. The best parts of the novel are when Alice is our guide to her fellow patients and the staff. Her sharp observations accompanied by the nicknames inspired by their owners’ individual habits are funny as well as acutely pointed. The day to day life on the ward, with all its petty gripes and conflicts is smartly evoked through Alice’s tart commentary.

The days go by, and Alice gets further down the rabbit hole, and we see flashes of the perceptions of the outside world as her family and friends come to visit her and she gradually reveals what led up to her being sectioned. As Alice continues to spiral, what she knows, what she believes, and what is real become horribly tangled.

There is, inevitably, a couple of stings in the tail but, for me, they fell a bit flat. Though Alice is undoubtedly a difficult and challenging personality, she is also a charismatic one and, I felt, deserved a better ending.

Thanks to Grove Atlantic and Netgalley for the digital review copy

Alice is a former police officer who is investigating 2 murders...in rhe mental hospital where she's a patient. A well done entry in the unreliable narrator genre. Good dialog and character development too

Mental patients are sometimes fascinating to read about, and Alice Armitage is one of them. She is a police officer, was a police officer, or imagines she was. She is now a long-term patient in an acute psychiatric ward after a mental breakdown. When one of the patients in the ward is murdered, Alice decides she is the perfect person to solve the crime since she has so much experience in investigations. She has identified the prime suspect, even though the police are ignoring her, but then the prime suspect is murdered as well.

The book was interesting and some of the quirky characters were fun. The plot was different in that it was told from the psychiatric patient's point of view - I liked that.

Thanks to Grove Atlantic through Netgalley for a copy. This book was published on August 3, 2021.

Thank you to Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Mark Billingham is what I would class as a quality author. This book stood up to this classification. Well written, great plot and good characters. Recommended.

Rabbit Hole is narrated by a very unreliable narrator, a woman named Alice who is suffering from a combination of the effects of too much drink and drugs, PTSD occasioned by her work with the police, and overwhelming frustration. The result was a breakdown in which she attacked someone with a wine bottle. Now she is in a mental institution in North London where first one, then another patient has been murdered. Although the police investigation is underway, Alice feels her experience and her situation as an inmate place her in an ideal position to solve the crimes. But she really is not well and the suspicion is raised in both her and the reader's minds that she might herself be the killer
Stated like this, it all sounds very grim, but Billingham is adroit at leavening it all with a certain mordant humour which relieves the darkness.
The major difficulty with the book is with the resolution, which is abrupt and not altogether convincing.. But by and large, this is well worth your time and attention. Just be prepared for something of a letdown at the end

My longer review is running on Reviewingtheevidence.com: http://www.reviewingtheevidence.com/default.html

A unique setting for a murder mystery - an acute psychiatric ward. Not only that, but the local detectives are 'helped' by Alice Armitage a patient but also an ex police woman.

The highlights of the book involve the many other characters, like 'The Thing', who get up to all sorts of sad yet funny scenarios. This is where Mr Billingham excels as we, the readers, are treated to lashings of humour to make to book immensely enjoyable.

In my opinion. don't worry about the story - just try and enjoy the characters! Loved it!

Thanks to Net Galley and Grove Atlantic for the chance to read and review the book which merits 6 stars?

I found Mark Billingham's latest book which is a stand-alone psychological thriller called Rabbit Hole really hard to get into at the beginning as it was a tough read, I only stuck with this latest book by Mark because I have enjoyed all his books I have read. But, once I got over the first few chapters I started to enjoy it. So stick with it! if you are like me!
Detective Constable Alice Armitage was a police officer. Or perhaps she just imagines she was. Whatever the truth is, she had a bout of PTSD, she self-medication with drink and drugs, and then had a psychotic breakdown,
Now, Alice is a long-term patient in the Shackleton Unit, which is an acute psychiatric ward, at Hendon Community Hospital. Though convinced that she doesn't really belong there, she finds companionship with the other patients in the ward despite their challenging and often intimidating issues. One of her fellow patients are murdered, Alice feels she is personally launch her own investigation from within the ward. Soon, she becomes convinced that she has identified the killer and that she can catch them.

Is her mind playing games with her???

The Police will not help Alice - so she has to go alone to catch this killer....

Will she catch the Killer before they strike again?

Big thank you to Netgalley and Little Brown Book Group for supplying a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review