A Pleasure and a Calling: A Novel

by Phil Hogan Narrated by Michael Page

Overview

In the tradition of Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley novels comes a deliciously unsettling, darkly funny novel about a man who quietly spies on the private lives of his neighbors.

You won't remember Mr. Heming. He was the estate agent who showed you around your comfortable home, suggested a 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 is; he has the keys to them all.

William Heming's most at home in a stranger's private things. He makes it his business to know all their secrets, and how they arrange their lives. His 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. Things begin to change when Mr. Hemings' obsession shifts from many people to one, and then a dead body winds up in someone's garden. For a man who is used to going unremarked, Mr. Heming's finds his natural routine becomes uncomfortably interrupted.

Editorial Reviews

DECEMBER 2014 - AudioFile

Narrator Michael Page’s portrayal of this “sociopath-next-door” will have listeners shopping for new door locks. Seemingly benign, even kindly, real estate agent Mr. Heming has a penchant for hanging onto keys and inviting himself into others’ homes and secrets. His interest in knowing the intimacies of his neighbors’ lives is by no means matched by such disclosures of his own life. Author and protagonist are united in their knack for holding back details until it suits their narrative. Page is right with them, sounding every bit the normal, vaguely middle-aged stuffed shirt Mr. Heming portrays himself to be, even as he recounts his inventive reprisals against those who have offended his twisted sense of right and wrong. K.W. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

★ 09/29/2014
British writer Hogan’s fourth novel (after All This Will Be Yours) is a gripping psychological thriller that pegs out the creep-o-meter with its chilling, original plot. Mr. Heming is a real estate agent in an English village, very successful, very curious, and very dangerous. He has sold hundreds of houses in 17 years and has kept the keys to all of them. He uses the keys to enter homes and spy, obsessively and surreptitiously interjecting himself into the homeowners’ lives, occasionally altering things for his own amusement, learning everything about each family: “I squeezed the juice out of them, though they didn’t know it.” Mr. Heming doesn’t think of himself as a stalker or voyeur, and he doesn’t consider himself a thief. He is, however, a man who will act decisively if threatened or even merely annoyed. His orderly life is suddenly complicated when he becomes smitten with Abigail Rice, a young woman to whom he sold a house. Abigail is involved with a philandering predator—a married man named Douglas Sharp, another one of Mr. Heming’s clients. Mr. Heming decides that Sharp must be removed, and, with his customary thoroughness, the realtor decides to discredit Sharp, but his complex plan takes a deadly turn. Hogan’s Mr. Heming is a monumentally diabolical character—the fact that he narrates the story further ups both the stakes and the tension. Readers won’t soon forget this first-rate, white-knuckle suspense novel. (Jan.)

From the Publisher

I loved A Pleasure and a Calling—gripping, sinister, original and brilliant!” —Sophie Hannah, bestselling author of The Monogram Murders and The Orphan Choir

“The word 'creepy' (attached to descriptive adverbs like 'insanely' and 'diabolically' or even 'deliciously') immediately comes to mind after a quick dip into A Pleasure and a Calling.” —Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

“A Pleasure and a Calling starts out slowly, meticulously building the first-person portrait of a sociopath. But, 70 pages in, the novel takes a sharp turn into Patricia Highsmith country, and the deliberately bland, purposely forgettable Heming stands revealed as Tom Ripley with a real estate license....This is [Phil Hogan's] first book to be published in the United States. Here's hoping for more to come.” —Dallas Morning News

“Hogan avoids clichés as he delivers one surprise after another. Heming at first seems harmless, but Hogan shows bit by bit how Heming has been scheming and diabolical, making this complex character both a villain and a hero. A Pleasure and a Calling brims with wry wit and taut tension, and will make readers think about changing the locks on their doors, just to be cautious.” —Associated Press

“How mesmerizing is this book? I started it at lunch one day and finished it after dinner the same night….Reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley books.” —The Charlotte Observer

“Beware, readers. Heming descends from a long line of dangerously seductive, alienated narcissists that includes Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley and Charles Anthony-Strangers on a Train-Bruno....Hogan is an especially agile storyteller, and he has assembled an admirably intricate back-story that explains (if not excuses) how Heming has come to be who he is. It's an exhilarating performance. Plan on having your locks changed soon after you finish reading the book.” —Richmond Times-Dispatch

“Engagingly written and compulsively readable...Readers will find themselves wondering just how secure their own homes are, and, at the same time, uncomfortably beguiled by the often charming Mr. Heming, whose heart is in the right place—except when it is decidedly not.” —The Columbus Dispatch

“Need some morbidly funny and unsettling psychological suspense? Look no further than Phil Hogan's A Pleasure and a Calling.” —The Seattle Times

“Along with the stylistic echoes of Highsmith, Hogan also moves into the creepy-campy territory that Roman Polanski staked out, especially in The Tenant and Rosemary's Baby....Hogan deftly creates situational suspense throughout the novel.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

“A gripping psychological thriller that pegs out the creep-o-meter with its chilling, original plot…Hogan's Mr. Heming is a monumentally diabolical character—the fact that he narrates the story further ups both the stakes and the tension. Readers won't soon forget this first-rate, white-knuckle suspense novel.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“This is murder most droll...Phil Hogan has written a wickedly funny book.” —The Washington Times

“Delicious and addicting. William Heming joins the ranks of unforgettable, unreliable narrators in this gloriously creepy novel of psychological suspense.” —Booklist (starred review)

“A memorably creepy sociopath…Hogan skillfully builds a character that combines Mr. Goodbar, Hannibal Lector and Moriarty.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Channeling the socially detached and unnerving personality of Nabokov's Humbert Humbert, Phil Hogan creates a character that will inspire intrigue as well as ire….This perfectly paced psychological suspense story is a roller-coaster ride through paranoia and manipulation.” —BookPage

“A creepy but compelling story.” —Kirkus Reviews (Eight Top-Shelf Crime Yarns to Help You Ring in 2015)

“A wonderfully creepy novel, macabre and blackly comic with a deeply unsettling and original hero.” —Rosamund Lupton, New York Times-bestselling author of Sister

“Hugely engrossing . . . Hogan captures perfectly [Heming's] mix of rationality and madness—the sense of logical means applied to deranged ends. The result is that we sympathize with Heming, embrace his plight—which only heightens our discomfort.” —The Guardian (UK)

“Brilliantly creepy.” —The Observer (UK)

“William Heming is cut from the same cloth as Barbara Covett in Zoë Heller's Notes On A Scandal, another unreliable narrator with whom we really should not be siding, but who proves so engaging that we can't help but go along for the ride . . . [A] gripping, thrilling novel.” —The Independent on Sunday (UK)

“The first-person portrayal of a truly cold-blooded protagonist is a hard thing to pull off, especially one whose outward appearance is so benign, but Phil Hogan has created an antihero horrifically ruthless and disquieting.” —The Guardian (UK)

“There is a delicious feeling of complicity in his misdemeanors. Heming gets inside your head as easily as he gets into his neighbors' houses. Indeed you cannot help asking as you finish this superbly plotted and genuinely creepy novel: wouldn't we all pry into our neighbors' lives like this if we could get away with it?” —Sunday Express (UK)

“You'll definitely want to change your locks after reading this original and darkly funny novel… [It] will send shivers down your spine.” —The Stylist (UK)

bestselling author of The Monogram Murders and The Sophie Hannah

I loved A Pleasure and a Calling--gripping, sinister, original and brilliant!

DECEMBER 2014 - AudioFile

Narrator Michael Page’s portrayal of this “sociopath-next-door” will have listeners shopping for new door locks. Seemingly benign, even kindly, real estate agent Mr. Heming has a penchant for hanging onto keys and inviting himself into others’ homes and secrets. His interest in knowing the intimacies of his neighbors’ lives is by no means matched by such disclosures of his own life. Author and protagonist are united in their knack for holding back details until it suits their narrative. Page is right with them, sounding every bit the normal, vaguely middle-aged stuffed shirt Mr. Heming portrays himself to be, even as he recounts his inventive reprisals against those who have offended his twisted sense of right and wrong. K.W. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2014-11-03
William Heming sells real estate, but that's not his only pursuit in this dark first-person tale by English journalist Hogan.To say that Heming's past was difficult is an understatement: His mother died in childbirth, his baby brother "disappeared," and his cousin, Isobel, despises him, leaving Heming to be cared for by his aunt Lillian, who finds the young man repulsive. After one incident too many, he's shipped off to boarding school, where his strangeness gets him into all sorts of trouble. Heming loves to steal keys and let himself into other people's homes, including the rooms occupied by fellow students and teachers. But he's not simply looking around; he likes to handle other people's belongings, steal them and sometimes make himself at home. Eventually, he's tossed from school and finds a job as an estate agent. When he encounters a rude dog walker one day, he decides to exact revenge. Since he keeps the keys to all the houses he's ever sold, he still has the one that opens the man's door, so he sneaks inside and leaves a "gift" that sets off a dramatic and deadly chain of events. In Heming's character, Hogan has created a memorably creepy sociopath whose eloquent defense of behavior that most civilized people would find repellant only serves to illustrate the extent of his breaks with reality and, along with it, conventional behavior. Heming also hints at terrible past crimes, generously leaving the reader to fill in the blanks when it comes to both the mechanics and exact outcomes. Hogan skillfully builds a character that combines Mr. Goodbar, Hannibal Lector and Moriarty, but in doing so, he offers the reader little in the way of resolution. Deft characterization, but reading about someone this relentlessly unconscionable will make most readers lunge for the shower as soon as they've reached the final page.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172524455
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	01/06/2015
Edition description:	Unabridged

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