The narrator has a quiet and understated sinister voice; listen carefully to his duplicitous story.

A Pleasure and a Calling

Phil Hogan

Random House UK, Transworld Publishers

Doubleday

ISBN: 9780857521880

Description:

You won’t remember Mr Heming. He showed you round your comfortable home, suggested a sustainable financial package, negotiated a price with the owner and called you with the good news. The less good news is that, all these years later, he still has the key.

That’s absurd, you laugh. Of all the many hundreds of houses he has sold, why would he still have the key to mine?

The answer to that is, he has the keys to them all.

William Heming’s every pleasure is in his leafy community. He loves and knows every inch of it, feels nurtured by it, and would defend it – perhaps not with his life but if it came to it, with yours…

My View:

This was a very interesting read, a quietly told tale of many, many crimes that unfold over a life time of treachery; small acts of mischievousness and sinister actions that thrive and grow to become acts of unthinkable ugliness with deadly consequence. Lives are discarded without remorse or emotion, ordinariness is a cloak this psychopath wears particularly well.

This is a beguiling read; the slow, straightforward relating of this tale in the first person cleverly builds tension and creates mystery… the reader does not get the full picture immediately but is fed crumbs that lead us to a path of death and mayhem. As you turn each page you will continue to wonder where this story is heading, and will question what is to happen next, you will become involved and eager for more information, more intimate knowledge of “Mr Ordinary”, Mr Heming. As he is a voyeur of other peoples worlds we are voyeurs’ of his, how very, very clever!