Rabbit Hole

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 *

Mark Billingham has twice won the Theakston's Old Peculier Award for Crime Novel of the Year, and has also won a Sherlock Award for the Best Detective created by a British writer. Each of the novels featuring Detective Inspector Tom Thorne has been a Sunday Times bestseller. Sleepyhead and Scaredy Cat were made into a hit TV series on Sky 1 starring David Morrissey as 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.