I thorough enjoyed this story. I had suspected one aspect of the story about halfway through but was kept intrigued right to the end. It’s nice to read a novel that’s a bit different from the norm. However, I would say that whilst the depiction of mental health patients seemed to be accurate and well researched, some people could find Alice’s brutal descriptions of their behaviour upsetting. Overall, recommended.

DC Alice Armitage is investigating the murder of a patient on a psychiatric ward. In a facility where security is paramount, she must try to discover how this was able to occur and also who could have possibly been able to carry this out. Could it have been one of his fellow patients? One of the members of staff? An outsider who has managed to gain access? Alice’s work is cut out, not least because the detective isn’t exactly on the case – she’s one of the patients in the ward.

I loved the premise of this book and found Alice a fascinating character. Despite traumatic events in her past placing her in the psychiatric unit, she is convinced that the police are not doing their job properly and so uses her skills to conduct an investigation of her own. Feeling that she has identified the killer, she uses her contacts in the outside world to assist, only to find her theory derailed several times.

Despite the setting, Rabbit Hole is packed with dark humour as we meet a plethora of characters, each given a nickname by Alice. Some of her fellow patients are an absolute joy, their well-described quirks making it easy to visualise what life was like in this unit.

For fans of the author’s Thorne series, you will be pleased to see that there are a few cameo appearances of characters you may recognise. I particularly liked the subtle Phil Hendricks reference quite early on in the book.

There are plenty of twists and turns along the way with numerous red herrings thrown in for good measure. The ending was not expected with part of it making me question everything I had read! This is a great standalone from Mark Billingham, an author who I don’t think has ever written anything less than a brilliant book.

An interesting gripping read waiting to find out who the killer was, however I was often confused keeping track of all the characters and their names as well as nicknames. It took me a while to realise who one of the victims where and I guessed one of the twists. I enjoyed the narration

A Dark, Suspenseful Tale…
A somewhat different take for this author and not in a bad way. A dark and suspenseful tale laced with equally dark humour, often emotionally draining in parts and boundaries lifted. A compelling and engaging read.

Rabbit Hole by Mark Billingham
Publisher: Little Brown Book Group UK
Publication Date 22/7/21

No spoilers
⭐️ ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Set in a psychiatric ward, this may not be everyone’s cup of tea but it was mine and I could not put it down.
Original, dark, and at times laugh out loud funny, this is like no other detective/murder mystery I’ve read before. Combined with a complex and unreliable narrator it really makes you think.
I’d like to thank the author, publisher and netgalley for providing me with this advance digital copy in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

I was intrigued by Rabbit Hole, and particularly its setting in a psychiatric ward with an assortment of colourful characters. I found myself constantly wondering how much I should believe of what former DC, Alice, was telling us, as she tried to solve a murder within the ward. It was obvious that, suffering from PTSD and a patient herself, she was often unreliable. But to what extent? Billingham keeps his reader guessing. I thoroughly enjoyed his writing style as well as his (often dark) humour. I found the setting authentic, as were Alice’s behaviour and thoughts. I don’t think this book will be for everyone, but if you have an interest in mental health and crime fiction, you will probably enjoy this.

Alice Armitage is in a psychiatric unit following a PTSD incident, when one of the patients is found dead, her police officer instincts kick in and starts investigating what happened. She is frustrated when the police do not take her assistance seriously.
A great thriller with well described characters of all the patients within the ward. All told from Alice’s perspective. A really enjoyable book with a twist at the end.

I found this book quite difficult to get along with at first because the narrator is intentionally rather pompous and annoying, but once I’d got over that I started to really enjoy it. It’s an interesting take on a crime fiction novel/thriller and I enjoyed the narrator’s dark humour.

This is my first book by Mark Billingham, and while I didn't fall in love with this book I would definitely try another one as people in my book club race about him.
The story was fantastic but I just didn't like Alice.

Sometimes there is just a powerhouse name in the thriller genre but somehow their work has just evaded you for one reason or another. Rabbit Hole was my first taste of the talented Mark Billingham’s work. I’m neither surprised nor shocked that I fell down the Rabbit Hole. The mind of Billingham is devious and twisted, he will take a common misconception in mental health and twist and turn it until it no longer resembles what it once was.

The author did the groundwork, and the reader took one step and we fell into the dark and depraved mind of Alice Armitage. She is an ex-police officer who has been medically retired. She experienced a deeply traumatic event that happened to her partner. She ultimately had a breakdown and things spiraled out of control quickly after her paranoia and violent attack directed at her boyfriend, Andy. She has now been sectioned under the mental health act and is an inpatient in an acute psychiatric ward.

I think I should be handcuffed after reading Rabbit Hole. I am guilty of loving this novel so much. I’m guilty of disliking character after character so much. I was an ex mental health worker am deliriously pleased with an accurate account of just how complex PTSD can be. Not long after her arrival in the ward one of the patients is found murdered. It is from here that things become extremely tangled and our viewpoint within Alice’s brain becomes heightened with delusions, fragmented memories, and deep-seated pain.

Alice is in the eye of a storm. All around her is chaos and destruction. When we meet her she making pronouncements of her fellow ward mates. Nicknames to allow her to remember them better, and all good ones either. My chest ached with some behaviors and I was more intrigued than ever to find out backstories. The author doesn’t beat around the bush, there is a mammoth in the room but when will it be addressed?

The tension is palpable and you get a real sense of fear and foreboding and you have no trouble visualizing the intensity of being trapped not only inside your mind but the confines of the ward also. Guilt is a dominant theme within Rabbit Hole and the reader gets a real sense of how far it can drag someone down. Guilt is hard to shake, hard to rationalize, and hard to free the shackles.

Rabbit Hole excels with its intelligent vivacity. A magnificent sense of gravitas with a terrifying exploration of mental health and guilt.

This is a Stand-alone book from Mark Billingham and very different from his other series
Set in a psychiatric ward, Alic is an in patient being treated for PTSD and a breakdown following alcohol and drug abuse. When a fellow patient is murder, Alice begins to investigate, she thinks she’s found the killer and feels she is being ignored by the police she becomes convinced she must solve the crime, until her prime suspect becomes the 2nd victim. Who can she trust? Who is the killer?
I enjoyed the thrill of this and love Marks style of writing , he never fails to do a good job
Highly recommend. Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this title

I do like Mark Billingham’s novels but the Rabbit Hole which is set in a psychiatric hospital , where we find ex police officer Alice who has been sectioned following the breakdown she suffered after the murder of her colleague and whilst she is there a patient is murdered and Alice tries to piece together who did it. The idea was good but it does jump around a bit so not an easy read but the way Mark Bellingham describes the patients made them very believable and at times funny.

When a patient is found dead on a psychiatric ward, fellow patient Alice is determined to find out what has happened and who is responsible, because not only is Alice well-placed to conduct a thorough investigation, she is also a former detective.

Having worked in several settings similar to this one, it is a very accurate depiction of day to day life that could only have come from very thorough research or personal experience.
Alice is also a very authentic character and reminded me of several patients that I have worked with in the past.

With a steady pace and a lot of interesting characters, while not massively gripping, it will keep you reading to find out what has happened.

I really wanted to love this book. I was so excited to get my hands on it. Maybe my expectations were so high that they marred my enjoyment. I don't know. But, despite not really getting on with it, I did get to the end. Sadly a bit underwhelmed, not even the twist - which was really more a reveal than a twist could save me.
Alice is a patient in an acute psychiatric ward. There was an incident which has left her struggling, with PTSD and, as many do, left to self medicate. Leading up to her being sectioned. We hear a lot about her ward, the people she now shares her existence with. The minutia of life in such a place. Either the author has some connection with such a place, or people who have experienced it, or it is very well researched. I don't know. What I do know is that, for me, the constant description of what is happening and to whom really did overshadow the murder that Alice was trying to solve. Actually murders - as there are two.
I also didn't really connect with Alice which I suspect didn't help me connect with the book as a whole.
Maybe I missed something, maybe there was something that went right over my head. Maybe I was expecting this book to be something it wasn't. For me though, it wasn't so much a thriller, nor was it particularly gripping. But I duly plodded through and got t the end hoping that there would be a light bulb moment of, well, something. Sadly it wasn't to be and I am sorry for that.
It won't stop me reading this author though. It just wasn't the book for me and that's just life. But I have to be honest in my reviews an, well, these are my honest thoughts.
My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

This was my first book by Mark Bellingham!! It was a nice quick read for me. Alice used to be a police officer but is now confined to a mental hospital in a psych ward. She is trying to solve a murder that has happened there. The story is narrated by Alice the whole way through and as she is unstable we don’t know what is real and what is not.

I really enjoyed this, the characters were developed well and each one of them has something to offer in the story too.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

The title of this book is absolutely perfect and after having read it, I feel like I went down a Rabbit Hole and am only just beginning to emerge!

I am a huge fan of Mark Billingham's work, particularly his Tom Thorne Series, but this is a standalone psychological thriller that explores the fractured mind of Alice Armitage and her quest to find a killer whilst an in-patient on an acute psychiatric unit.

I said I felt like I went down a Rabbit Hole and that's because the reader is immersed totally within Alice's mind; the whole of the book is written from her perspective and focusses on her trying to solve a murder whilst dealing with the mental health difficulties she and those around her are experiencing but from her point of view rather than a clinical one, i.e. simplistic, but with a bit of humour so it's not all dark and heavy going.

Alice is an unreliable narrator which had me scratching my head wondering what was actually real and what was only real from Alice's perspective. This, I think, was genius as it provided plenty of opportunities for distractions and mis-directions which worked well but mashed my head a little!

This wasn't an easy book to read and I have a feeling it won't appeal to everyone but if you want to read something a bit different, I would recommend but be prepared to join Alice in the Rabbit Hole.

Many thanks to Little, Brown Book Group UK and NetGalley for my copy in return for an unbiased and unedited review.

Alice Armitage is an ex-police officer, now under section in a psychiatric ward after the murder of a police colleague caused Alice’s mental health to break down. When a patient is found dead in Alice’s ward, she can’t help conducting her own investigation, through frustration at what she perceives to be inertia from the police and Alice’s own longing to have her old status back.

Rabbit Hole can’t have been an easy book to write, as all the action takes place within Fleet Ward, with the cast of characters including the ward’s patients, staff, occasional visitors and the police. There is a sense of danger running throughout, without ever falling into the trap of stereotyping anyone; the various characters who are inpatients are connected by the vulnerability of their mental health statuses, while the ward nurses are largely seen as benign and kind.

Having worked in similar settings – not psychiatric wards, but informal residential mental health settings – I almost felt like I could have been on shift in the Fleet Ward at times, and there were very detailed depictions of things like the various levels of observation needed and the bonding that can happen between staff and patients, leading to small breaches of confidentiality.

Alice is an interesting main character, bringing another layer to the notion of an unreliable witness, as her PTSD often means she genuinely doesn’t have a clear-eyed view of what has happened. She feels a keen sense of loss for her old life, and sometimes acts out her frustrations on well-meaning friends and family, so she can be difficult to sympathise with.

Rabbit Hole is definitely a book that needs to be read to the last page. It’s not just a simple ‘whodunnit’, so immerse yourself and don’t skip anything.

This book has had so much hype, and the premise was soooo up my street.
However, I don't think the book lived up to the hype. I was left so disappointed. I felt like this book went on forever... the pacing was just so slow. It felt very repetitive.
This book really wasn't for me.

Another brilliant book from Mark Billingham.
This is a standalone book and not linked to the Tom Thorne series.
Alice or Al is in a community hospital as she is suffering from PTSD. She is the narrator throughout the book and has a great sense of humour. Her descriptions of the other patients are brutally honest and bordering on insulting, but it adds to story as you can imagine them from her descriptions.
Al thinks she’s ok some of the time but at other times she clearly struggles and you really feel for her.
There’s a murder in the hospital and Al wants to help investigate. She has a friend in the Police and asks him for information but this doesn’t get her very far.
I loved the sense of looking out for each other that Al had with some of the other patients and whilst there are two murders, I found this to be a heartwarming story.
A very different read to the Tom Thorne series, but one that I thoroughly enjoyed.
Thanks to Little Brown Book Group and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book

A pretty disturbing tale set in a psychiatric hospital where one is never sure who’s who. Darkly amusing at times tragic at others the main character suffering from PTSD regards herself as a still serving police officer when a murder happens on her ward. She sets out to solve the case with her suspicions centring on a nursing member of staff. The reasons for her incarceration are revealed as an incident where a colleague was murdered and her downfall into drink and drugs when she is sectioned. The murder of her main suspect throws her into a torment of self doubt whereby she suspects herself. Her fellow patients are brilliantly described and all could be suspects along with the staff at some point in the narrative. It all builds to a satisfactory conclusion with a twist at the end in tale that is different but never disinteresting.