Locked Room murder set in a high security facility

18th January 2023

The Institution by Helen Fields, locked room murder set in a high security facility,

I recently read, and really enjoyed, The Last Girl to Die by Helen Fields. I was very much looking forward to The Institution. It is a very different book, but in no way did it disappoint. The Institution of the title is a very high security facility that holds offenders convicted of horrendous murders. but deemed not to be sane enough to be held in a normal prison. ‘Guests’ held in the place have very little prospect of ever seeing freedom again. The Institution itself is a converted castle set absolutely in the middle of nowhere. We suspect somewhere in Scotland, but we are never told. Possibly to emphasise that it is the world’s highest security facility, yet somehow divorced from the world. The worst of the worst offenders are housed in Heaven Ward, high up in one of the towers.

An horrendous event happens. A highly pregnant nurse is murdered, and her unborn child extracted from her body by Caesarean operation. The child is taken and held for ransom. The family are given just five days to raise a very large sum in crypto currency and pay it over. How could this possibly have happened? There are five ‘guests’ on Heaven Ward – each absolutely capable of such an horrific crime. That, indeed, is why they are there. But is it possible that one of them could have planned and executed the crime without the assistance of one of the very small number of staff members with access to the ward? How was the baby smuggled out of the facility?

Five days is all the time the authorities have to solve the crime and save the baby. Two people are sent undercover into the facility. The first is Connie Woolwine who is a profiler with an expertise in solving hard to fathom cases. She is to work on the ward. The second is policeman Brodie Baarda, who is to pose an an offender sent to the Institution. Together they have to find the perpetrator and rescue the baby. Baarda is pitched as a military man who had done something ghastly. Connie is to interview the five offenders on the ward – ostensibly to check whether they are suitable companions for Baarda, but in fact to profile each as the potential murderer. We learn, in quite horrifying and graphic detail, about the crimes they have committed. The days go by – Connie and Baarda are in great danger of exposure, as the inmates, and the staff, begin to show their true colours.

A major storm hits the facility, and the book moves to a well thought through, and quite scary, conclusion.

The Institution is a brilliant thriller. It is to be published in March 2023.

Tony for the TripFiction team

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