I didn’t enjoy this one at all sadly. Based on the synopsis I thought it was going to be something I would love but the execution unfortunately fell flat

I was disappointed in this standalone novel from a crime thriller writer whose Tom Thorne books I've devoured and loved.

Perhaps I just couldn't handle the story line about a woman, Alice Armitage, who is sectioned after suffering PTSD, overdoing it with drugs and drink, and just generally having a psychotic breakdown. Because she is an unreliable narrator, I had trouble believing anything that happened in the story and certainly wondered if she really was a police officer. The whole murder on the locked ward mystery thing really wasn't very thrilling or suspenseful, and I found that I couldn't care less about any of the characters or the investigation that Alice is carrying out on her own since the detectives who come don't seem to interested in what she has to say. It was a slog and slow and boring so I was relieved when I finally got the the end -- the only part of the book that was interesting: the Epilogue.

Also, another turnoff for me, sorry to say, is the British jargon and vocabulary. The pop culture references were unfamiliar, and -- have I already mentioned that none of the characters were in the least appealing or relatable? I don't like living in a world of PTSD, delusions and fragmented thoughts though I can see where this might be another reader's cup of tea. I get it, it's set on a mental health lockdown unit (I've worked there as an RN in places where there is some real behavior that would be called "crazy") but it is definitely not my preferred setting for a good suspense thriller.

So, be wary if you're looking for a typical Mark Billingham crime thriller cause this isn't it.

Thank you to Atlantic Monthly Press for this e-book ARC to read and review.

Meet 31-year-old Alice Francis Armitage, also known as Al, average height average weight average everything.
Al was a detective constable in London with the Metropolitan Police homicide unit until suffering a traumatic event that left her suffering from PTSD and ended with her being put on compassionate leave after she was sectioned. Then there's a murder in the ward and Al decides to investigate. She was a DS by all means (or was she)so why not help. Soon there is another body.

I love the humorous way the story is told but it was very different from his other books that I have read so I'm still in two minds about this one. I think the story was told in a very clever and intelligent way and I felt jittery at times because you feel you are in the mind of the main character and that is a hole you don't want to fall in!
It did feel a bit disjointed at times and I'm not sure if that was done on purpose and because of the erratic behaviour of the main character. I did, unfortunately, get distracted a lot while reading this 1 which normally doesn't happen when I read his books.
Thank you to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion

I really struggled with this book and it felt a little like wading through treacle. The blurb and subject matter really appealed to me but I found the book laborious. The basic story was a good one but I didn’t engage with any of the characters and maybe that is why I found it hard work. To me there was no build up to a climactic ending.

I’m sure some will find this a brilliant and engaging boom but it just wasn’t my cup of tea.

Mark Billingham pens one of my favourite crime series - the Tom Thorne books. But he also writes standalones - the latest is Rabbit Hole.

Now, what do think when you hear the title? Merriam Webster defines a rabbit hole as "a complexly bizarre or difficult state or situation conceived of as a hole into which one falls or descends."

Alice Armitage find herself in a rabbit hole. She's a "medically retired" police officer. After witnessing the death of her partner, she develops PTSD and starts self medicating with drink and drugs. Which lands her sectioned into a secure psychiatric unit.

"A murder isn't really anything to write home about in a place like this, not when you think about it. It's almost inevitable, I reckon, like the noise and the smell. You ask me, a murder's par for the course."

Uh huh, a patient is murdered and Alice, as police, decides to work the case from inside. Great premise! Oh, Alice is a wonderfully unreliable narrator! She has memory issues, is paranoid and takes a boatload of meds every day - as does everyone she lives with. The killer could be any one of the residents.

There are a number of supporting players in Rabbit Hole - both residents and staff. The book is told from Alice's point of view and that's how we get to know the others. I have to applaud Billingham's description of those residents and their illnesses, as well as the setting and the every day life on the ward. We learn bits and pieces of what came before for Alice from interactions with some ex colleagues, friends and family. There's some dark humour scattered throughout.

As to the 'investigation - I was just as stymied as Alice. I was with her as she pieced together answers that seemed quite logical, but changed often with new observations, memories and occurrences. I truly (and happily) had no idea who the killer would be. I thought things were being wrapped up in the run up to the final pages, and was caught off guard by an unexpected twist. Nice ending!

In my opinion, the idea for Rabbit Hole was really different (in a good way), the setting jumped to life, the characters were intriguing and really well drawn and I couldn't solve the mystery myself. Well done Mark Billingham! I'll be waiting for your next book.

So I like this author and the premise of the story is clever but the execution was lacking for me. Al is sectioned in a mental ward with PTSD after the killing of her partner as a cop. A murder takes place on the ward and Al's instincts kick in to solve the crime. The reveal of the murderer didn't connect for me although the question of whether Al is really who she thinks she is kept me guessing. The patients on the ward with Al are well drawn with their quirks and mental states but there are many secondary characters to keep up with once the staff of the ward are thrown in. I liked the Epilogue but felt like there were too many holes in Rabbit Hole.

Copy provided by the publisher and NetGalley

After suffering from acute PTSD and going down a spiral caused by alcohol and drugs, Alice Armitage is a long-term patient at Fleet Ward, a psychiatric hospital in London. When Kevin, a fellow patient, is murdered Alice is compelled to use her training as a former police officer to investigate his death. Alice thinks she has identified the killer but she is ignored by the police. But then Alice's prime suspect becomes the second victim and her hypothesis unravels. Alice descends into a bout of self-doubt and dispair and comes close to another psychological breakdown as she works to find the truth.

This was a good read and certainly makes good use of the confined setting and a very unreliable narrator.

I received a digital ARC from Netgalley and Grove Atlantic with no requirements for a review. I voluntarily read this book and provided this review.

I was granted a free copy of this book by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This book was goo, but not great. As a lover of thrillers, I was hoping for a bit of a better resolution. Billingham is a fantastic author, but this book did not match his series of novels before this. If you want a good mental health driven thriller, read the Silent Patient instead.

EXCERPT: 'So, what do you think happened, Al?' L-Plate asked.

I didn't tell her what I thought because, to be honest, I was scared as much as anything. I was excited, don't get me wrong, all those professional instincts starting to kick in, but I was . . . wary. Right then, with a body cooling just yards away, it was no more than a feeling and I try to steer clear of those, with good reason. Eighteen months before, I'd had a feeling that the crack-head who'd invited us into his flat on the Mile End Road was harmless. If it hadn't been for that, there wouldn't have been any PTSD or any need for the variety of things I poured and snorted and popped into my body to numb that pain. I would not have ended up thinking that the people I loved most in the world were trying to kill me or that strangers could read my mind. I would not have hurt anyone.

ABOUT 'RABBIT HOLE': Alice Armitage is a police officer. Or she was.

Or perhaps she just imagines she was.

Whatever the truth is, following a debilitating bout of PTSD, self-medication with drink and drugs, and a psychotic breakdown, Alice is now a long-term patient in an acute psychiatric ward.

When one of her fellow patients is murdered, Alice becomes convinced that she has identified the killer and that she can catch them. Ignored by the police, she begins her own investigation. But when her prime suspect becomes the second victim, Alice's life begins to unravel still further as she realizes that she cannot trust anyone, least of all herself.

MY THOUGHTS: Mark Billingham is an amazing author. His depiction of Alice Armitage is brilliant, his forays into her mind, scary.

Reading Rabbit Hole was a nostalgic experience for me. It reawakened a lot of memories of patients and incidents from my psychiatric nursing days, some amusing, some not. Billingham has done his research well.

I particularly loved his reference to 'the seven dwarves of lunacy' - Angry, Jumpy, Nervy, are the three he named, but let me add Twitchy, Dopey, Spacey, and Deluded to his list. He definitely hasn't lost his trademark sense of humour, e.g. the Detective Constables who, when she can't recall their names, Alice dubs French and Saunders. In fact, in Rabbit Hole, Billingham has been able to give his sense of humour free reign. He certainly got plenty of chuckles out of me! Neither do I think naming his main character Alice was a random inclination.

He also has a lot of fun with the nicknames that Alice gives her fellow patients, and I apprecited the run down we got on both them and the staff who care for them.

Billingham uses first person narrative to tell this story. Everything you see, you see from Alice's perspective. So we are privy to all Alice's erratic and, at times, manic thoughts, as well as her flashes of lucidity. But, just like Alice, we don't know what happens when she has her blackouts, or even that they are occurring, which makes for very interesting reading.

Please don't go into Rabbit Hole expecting a Tom Thorne thriller/police procedural. You will be disappointed. Instead, go into Rabbit Hole with an open mind and be prepared to enjoy a 'locked room' murder-mystery set in a (supposedly) secure acute psychiatric ward told from the not always reliable point of view of one of the patients. I had a ball with this read, and I hope that you do too.

⭐⭐⭐⭐.5

#RabbitHole #NetGalley

I: #markbillingham @groveatlantic

T: @MarkBillingham @groveatlantic

#contemporaryfiction #crime #mentalhealth #murdermystery

THE AUTHOR: Mark Billingham was born and brought up in Birmingham. Having worked for some years as an actor and more recently as a TV writer and stand-up comedian his first crime novel was published in 2001. Mark lives in North London with his wife and two children.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Grove Atlantic via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of Rabbit Hole by Mark Billingham 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 will also be published on Twitter, Amazon, Instagram and my webpage

Thank you to the author, Grove Atlantic and NetGalley, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I found this a hard slog. The setting should have been unsettling and claustrophobic - what could be worse than losing control of all aspects of your life, while your mental stability is on the point of tipping? However, as described by the author, this was a collection of annoying people (definitely including the protagonist in the "annoying") thrown together in a setting that isolated them from the outside world, but as a story had no pacing or real narrative drive. Yes, I understand that the protagonist is utterly unreliable and we are hearing the story as perceived and told by her, but beyond finding her intensely unlikeable I didn't have much interest in working out what was going on. The big twist and reveal fell flat, I found it foreseeable and not a surprise. I think the author may have skimped a bit on the research on mental health institutions and practices - it certainly didn't ring true to any I am familiar with.

Rabbit Hole is my first book by Mark Bellingham so I went in without any expectations. The idea intrigued me and the story had potential, however the pacing kept losing me. I would put the book down and not feel any need to pick it back up. I enjoyed it when it was actually in my hands, though. It was pretty obvious that we had an unreliable narrator. Not because she was trying to hide from us but because she really didn’t know. Al decides to solve a case even though she’s a patient in the Mental Hospital it happens in. She is a cop after all. Isn’t she? It never seems quite clear.

What is clear is that she is suffering. She has PTSD from something that happened and she is not helping her own recovery at all. You can feel her anxiety and her confusion. The pacing just didn’t give a sense of urgency. Sure, someone is killing people in this place but everyone just go about your business. I liked it while I was reading it. I

A twisty, riveting and fascinating book full of humour and empathy toward the characters.
It's a great thriller that kept me on the edge, a page turner I couldn't put down.
Alice is an unreliable characters and you cannot help feeling for her and wondering if what she's telling is real or delusion.
There's plenty going on and the twists always makes you question what you thought before.
It's a thriller but it's a realistic description of what are mental health problems and how they can affect people.
It's entertaining but thought provoking as well.
Mark Billngham is a master storyteller and delivers an excellent story.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Alice Armitage has found herself sectioned in a psychiatric ward after a traumatic event at work left her with PTSD. When one of her fellow patients is murdered Alice begins the hunt for clues. After all she worked for the police for years so who better to help solve the crime? The only problem is no one else is taking Alice seriously and trying to help could well compromise her recovery.
The story is narrated by Alice which means you get a real insight into how she is coping and feeling. Although the book is far from lighthearted there are some humorous moments. Alice’s descriptions of her fellow patients and staff and the nicknames she gives them made laugh.
It gives you a real insight into how events can really mess up your mental health and how difficult it can then be to get yourself back on track. At times I almost agreed with Alice that she was getting better and then she would do something and I thought oh no she’s not!
I thought all the twists had played out and then at the very end was another one.
Brilliantly written, Mark Billingham is one of my favourite authors and his Tom Thorne books are a “must read” for me but this proves that he can go “off road” and still come up with an amazing story.

Rabbit Hole is the latest enthralling standalone from the master that is king of crime Mark Billingham. Detective Constable Alice Armitage is a police officer. Or she was. Or perhaps she just imagines she was. Whatever the truth is, following a debilitating bout of PTSD, self-medication with drink and drugs, and a psychotic breakdown, Alice is now a long-term patient in the Shackleton Unit, 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. So when one of her fellow patients is murdered, Alice feels personally compelled to launch an investigation from within the ward. Soon, she becomes convinced that she has identified the killer and that she can catch them. Ignored by the police, she must gather proof on her own, relying on the few contacts she has on the outside that still take her calls, so she begins her own off-the-books investigation.

But when her prime suspect becomes the second victim, Alice's life begins to unravel as she realises that she cannot trust anyone in the ward, least of all herself. Having lost her conviction and with her investigative confidence shattered, she comes dangerously close to a psychological point of no return. This is a compulsive and enthralling thriller from the very beginning with a taut and totally original plotline and in contrast to the humour lacing the story throughout is a sad, tender set of emotions. Billingham offers up a rich and intricate portrayal of a first-person narrator who appears to be unreliable and gives us insight into her issues mentally. It's fresh and edgy but also addresses pressing social issues and is populated with characters ripe with idiosyncrasies and once again Billingham pushes the boundaries of crime writing shining a light into some of the darker corners of society. A subtle, captivating and nuanced character study and a glimpse at the plight of those suffering from PTSD, psychosis and delusions. Highly recommended.

In an unusual change of pace, Mark Billingham places his detective in a locked ward. Alice (Al) has been relieved of her duties as a Detective Constable in the Metropolitan Police after a traumatic incident in which her partner was stabbed to death, leading to a psychotic break. When one of the other patients is murdered, she feels its her duty to investigate, calling on a friend on the outside to occasionally help her with information, but generally relying on her own observations and understanding of the setting. But once she's settled on a suspect, there's another murder.

The story is told in Alice's snarky, funny voice, but along with the humor we feel her anxiety as she tries to sort out what happened and redeem herself as a detective. But, of course, she's a classic unreliable narrator. What's real, and what has been spun up out of her illness?

It's an interesting concept, and Alice's voice is fun, but the pacing works against suspense and the snark doesn't always pair well with creating an accurate picture of what it's like to suffer from a debilitating illness. Overall, enjoyable at times but not (for me) entirely successful.

Thank you NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for letting me read this.

I've read some of Mark Billingham's books before and I really enjoy the Tom Thorne series. This was a stand alone book (not Tom Thorne) and is set in a psychiatric institution.

The main character is an inmate and a detective and when a murder takes place she has to get involved.

I enjoyed the plot and the characters in the ward are brilliantly written with their various nuances. Due to the location of the story the humour in the book is excellent and the twists and turns made it a really enjoyable read.

I’d like to thank Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read ‘Rabbit Hole’ by Mark Billingham in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

Alice is a detective constable with London’s Metropolitan Police and is currently in an acute psychiatric ward after being detained under the Mental Health Act suffering from PTSD (plus the addition of drink and drugs!). One of her fellow-patients, Kevin, is found dead in his room and Alice is eager to get involved. When she’s turned away she decides to conducts her own investigation from inside the ward and comes up with her prime suspect who unfortunately comes to an untimely end. So who did kill Kevin?

‘Rabbit Hole’ has been well-written with very good character descriptions but I’d expected it to be more of a police investigative thriller rather than a jocular novel about Alice who wants to get involved but is thwarted at her every turn. I’m so used to Billingham’s Tom Thorne that this departure from what I expect from him has thrown me, I didn’t really enjoy it and I’m disappointed that it wasn’t of a more serious nature. I’m sorry that I couldn’t get more involved in the plot and the characters but I’m sure I’ll be in the minority and a lot of readers will enjoy it.

What I would have liked to read, based on the synopsys: a complex, realistic depiction of life and (unnatural) death on a mental health ward, driven by complex, well-rounded characters and suffused with atmosphere, with maybe some sarcasm, darkness and/or social commentary thrown into the mix.
What I got: a snarky, crass, unsufferable main character constantly hitting me over the head with juvenile oh-so-real language straight out of old school chick lit (thankfully no romance, though, so small mercies), over-explaining suspicions that were fairly simplistic to begin with.

I don't mean to disparage Mr. Billingham, but I did not get the impression that a lot of research went into this novel; in the Acknowledgements section, the author thanks a mental health nurse he apparently got some information from, and he's quite happy to repeatedly list types of medication (speaking of which, is it really common practice to let a patient sleep through dinner and the after-dinner rounds of medication?!? Wouldn't you at least make sure she took her pills?), but that's as deep as it gets. The other patients are mostly played for entertainment, their respective disorders nothing more than quirks, and they all seem to be quite content to be stuck where they are, boring though it may be; there's no sense of suffering (I mean let's face it, being mentally ill sucks) or despondency, and most of the time we don't even get a proper insight into what exactly is wrong with them, they're simply dudes who like to fling food at security cameras (convenient!) or talk about sex a lot, in a decidedly unthreatening Carry On kind of way. Apparently one of them is in the throes of some fairly serious long-term psychosis, but again, this is mainly played for laughs (mention his particular delusion, and watch him go crazy with fear! Funsies), and the descriptions, if you've ever looked into what an acute psychotic episode looks and feels like, don't even ring true.
Same goes for Anorexic Girl -- talk about someone else's love handles, and off she goes on another 5-hour walking bender up and down the corridors! Total riot! First of all, it doesn't really work that way (it's an internal compulsion, not something that's triggered by other people's weight problems), and secondly, it's not funny. (Why is she even there? Wouldn't she have been better off at a clinic specialising in eating disorders?) Alice herself supposedly suffers from PTSD, but again, I did not find any of that convincing.
All told, the hospital setting isn't much more than a gimmick. It should have been claustrophobic and unsettling, because what can be more fundamentally frightening than having control over your whole life taken away from you by a faceless institution while at the same time feeling the moorings of your identity coming loose?, but life on Fleet Ward felt like an extended stay at a particularly crummy B&B in the middle of nowhere.
Out of nowhere, there's some clunky Q&A-type dialogue thrown in regarding how the mentally ill are people too and what it's like to be afflicted, which I found pretty heavy-handed and lip service-y as well as structurally redundant, as it was the author's job to let us live inside the head of one such person -- I get that writing a coherent, structured novel from the perspective of a character who can trust neither her thoughts nor her recollection nor her perceptions is basically the toughest job imaginable, but, well, you know, if you take it on, you take it on, right? I could have done without that Deep Conversation with the café lady, as well as the cringe-inducing messaging between Alice and her former flatmate that added nothing to the narrative except a little padding (strings of emojis, anyone? I think I already used the word "juvenile", so I won't bring it up again).

There's a Twist at the end (*sigh* of course there is) that's apparently supposed to shock us, and then Another Twist I'm pretty sure was intended as a jaw-dropping surprise, but, well, both of them really weren't that surprising at all, especially the second one; I had my doubts about that one pretty much from the beginning.

In the end, this is just another beach read, and of course there's nothing really wrong with that; if you're simply looking for a few hours' entertainment that's a bit "different" and not too taxing AND you can stand the main character's voice and attitude, and are not too particular about the real-life effects of mental illness, Rabbit Hole will probably deliver. Sadly, I was hoping for a lot more.

I'm not really sure how I feel about this book I mean I enjoyed reading it as its one of my favourite settings for a story but I think I expected more and the ending was a bit blah

This is an intense psychological thriller from Mark Billingham and very different from his usual genre. Alice is suffering from PTSD and is in an acute psychiatric ward, following a traumatic event. A patient is murdered and we gain an insight into the state of Alice's mind, which is portrayed with great sensitivity. It's a tough and emotional read but has touches of humour and is very cleverly written. Thanks to Net Galley for my ARC.