Rabbit Hole
The Sunday Times number one bestseller
Published on 20. January 2022
Book
Paperback/Softback
464 pages
978-0-7515-7728-0 (ISBN)
Description
***THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER***
***THE TIMES CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR***
My name is Alice. I'm a police officer.
I'm trying to solve a murder on a psychiatric ward.
But I'm also a patient...
They were meant to be safe on Fleet Ward: psychiatric patients monitored, treated, cared for. But now one of their number is found murdered, and the accusations begin to fly.
Was it one of his fellow patients? A member of staff? Or did someone come in from the outside?
DC Alice Armitage is methodical, tireless, and she's quickly on the trail of the killer.
The only problem is, Alice is a patient too.
________________________
'Fast-paced and twisting'
Paula Hawkins
'At the very least it should reach the shortlist of this year's Booker prize'
The Times
'A deeply compelling read'
Harriet Tyce
'The most cunning, complex, claustrophobic mystery'
Louise Candlish
'Immense skill and heart'
Eve Chase
'Brilliant, suspenseful, poignant, heartbreaking, surprisingly funny'
Linwood Barclay
'One of the most consistently entertaining, insightful crime writers working today'
Gillian Flynn
'A world-class crime writer'
Karin Slaughter
'Mark Billingham is a master of psychology'
Ian Rankin
'Billingham is always a must read'
Harlan Coben
***THE TIMES CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR***
My name is Alice. I'm a police officer.
I'm trying to solve a murder on a psychiatric ward.
But I'm also a patient...
They were meant to be safe on Fleet Ward: psychiatric patients monitored, treated, cared for. But now one of their number is found murdered, and the accusations begin to fly.
Was it one of his fellow patients? A member of staff? Or did someone come in from the outside?
DC Alice Armitage is methodical, tireless, and she's quickly on the trail of the killer.
The only problem is, Alice is a patient too.
________________________
'Fast-paced and twisting'
Paula Hawkins
'At the very least it should reach the shortlist of this year's Booker prize'
The Times
'A deeply compelling read'
Harriet Tyce
'The most cunning, complex, claustrophobic mystery'
Louise Candlish
'Immense skill and heart'
Eve Chase
'Brilliant, suspenseful, poignant, heartbreaking, surprisingly funny'
Linwood Barclay
'One of the most consistently entertaining, insightful crime writers working today'
Gillian Flynn
'A world-class crime writer'
Karin Slaughter
'Mark Billingham is a master of psychology'
Ian Rankin
'Billingham is always a must read'
Harlan Coben
Reviews / Votes
A gripping, twisting murder mystery and a blackly comic indictment of the way we treat psychological illness today. At the very least it should reach the shortlist of this year's Booker prize. * The Times * Follow Alice - plucky, resourceful, lovable and infuriating - down the Rabbit Hole in Billingham's fast-paced and twisting thriller * Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train * Rabbit Hole is the most cunning, complex, claustrophobic mystery with delicious echoes of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I tore through it, terrified I'd never get out * Louise Candlish, author of Our House * Rabbit Hole is authentic, raucous and deeply compassionate. Expertly balancing humour, tension and pathos, it'll do for the psychiatric ward what The Thursday Murder Club has done for retirement villages. A deeply compelling read * Harriet Tyce, author of Blood Orange * A gripping murder mystery with a streak of black humour * Sunday Times (Books of the Year 2021) * Mark Billingham's tough, funny novel combines a shockingly twisty plot with a scathing critique of our mental health services * Daily Mail * I was totally drawn into Rabbit Hole by Alice, the novel's wildly unreliable narrator. Hilarious, menacing yet vulnerable, she's a brilliant creation, alive on the page. Billingham creates the dark, claustrophobic world of the psychiatric ward with both immense skill and heart * Eve Chase, author of The Glass House * Brilliant, suspenseful, poignant, heartbreaking, surprisingly funny, and Mark Billingham, magician that he is, pulls that proverbial rabbit out of the hat at the end. More than just about any other book I've read, I HAD to know how it would all come together * Linwood Barclay * Unusual and ambitious - written with immense sympathy, but also glorious jet-black humour * Daily Express * A one-of-a-kind narrative and a finale that resolves most matters but preserves a measure of tantalizing ambiguity * Wall Street Journal * Billingham's picture of the ward and its staff is full of humanity, leaving us with a clear sense that this kind of illness could affect any of us, and the story offers an excellent twist. He gets better and better. * Literary Review * An absolute monster of a read, it pulls you in close for a hug as it slaps your awareness. A LoveReading Star Book and Book of the Month, Rabbit Hole is quite simply an outstanding and wondrous ride. * LoveReading (book of the month) * When the solution comes it's perfectly satisfying. My guess, though, is that what most readers will remember more intensely is . . . Alice's voice: by turns funny, broken, chatty, defiant, bewildered-but always utterly convincing and compelling. * Readers Digest * It's all gripping stuff * Toronto Star * With a powerful shocker that you never see coming, it is thought-provoking to discover what truly lies beneath * The Mystery Site * Mark Billingham's Rabbit Hole is a terrific mystery and a gripping whodunit and whydunit - and especially howdunit * Winnipeg Free Press *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Little, Brown Book Group
Dimensions
Height: 194 mm
Width: 126 mm
Thickness: 30 mm
Weight
318 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-7515-7728-0 (9780751577280)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
07/2021
Sphere
€5.49
Available for download
Previous edition
Book
07/2021
Little, Brown
€19.00
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Person
Mark Billingham has twice won the Theakston Old Peculier Award for Crime Novel of the Year, the Sherlock Award for the best detective created by a British writer and in 2026 he was awarded the Crime Writers' Association Diamond Dagger for an outstanding lifetime contribution to the genre. Sleepyhead and Scaredy Cat were made into a hit TV series on Sky 1 starring David Morrissey as Tom Thorne, and a series based on the novels In the Dark and Time of Death was broadcast on BBC1. Mark lives in north London with his wife and two children.