A Pleasure and a Calling by Phil Hogan

Published by Picador on January 6, 2015

William Heming is one of the most unusual protagonists I've encountered in a crime novel. He's likable enough if you overlook his penchant for killing people when it makes his life more convenient. He has some other odd habits that, in a real person, would be a bit frightening. At the same time, A Pleasure and a Calling is so well written that I was happy to get to know Heming as a fictional character, even if I wouldn't want to be his neighbor.

The Cooksons return from vacation to find a week-old dead body in their garden. Heming is their estate agent. About two-thirds of the way into the novel, we learn how the corpse arrived at its destination. We work our way there in a story that moves with a deliberate pace as Phil Hogan devotes attention to characters, setting, and dark humor.

Since he was a young boy, Heming has been a snoop. Early chapters in the novel recount his life-long obsession with stealing keys, entering homes and offices, learning people's secrets, and occasionally taking a souvenir (a ball of rubber bands, for instance). A career in real estate, where keys are simply handed to him, is a perfect calling. Heming is not a thief in the conventional sense. He steals the privacy of his victims, solely to satisfy his own curiosity. That makes him creepy but mostly harmless -- until his hobby gets the better of him.

Back in the present, Heming has a mild confrontation with a man named Douglas Sharp whose dog left an unwelcome deposit on a walking path. The intensely curious Heming makes it his business to learn about Sharp. He becomes convinced that Sharp is having an affair with a librarian named Abigail and, having taken an instant dislike to the man, decides to meddle in his life. In the course of meddling, William becomes unaccountably besotted with Abigail.

The consequences of Heming's prying and meddling occupy the last two-thirds of the book. Most of the consequences result from Heming's frequently mistaken certainty that something nefarious is afoot. He sets in motion a chain of events that are perfectly logical and highly entertaining. In fact, the logic of the story sets it apart from most modern crime novels. Events build upon one another in a way that makes an improbable story seem perfectly natural.

Heming is an engaging character although, in real life, he would justly be regarded as sinister and well deserving of incarceration. He is a bit of a rogue, using women and leaving them, although he leaves to protect himself from falling in love and the pain of love's inevitable loss. He's charming and polite and never dishonest about his intentions, so the women don't seem to mind being used. Firm in the belief that the only constant in life is change, William prefers "the intimacy of serial love" to the illusion of lasting love.

A Pleasure and a Calling is a leisurely novel of elegant prose. Hogan develops tension at appropriate moments but this is more a character-based novel than a thriller. It took me some time to invest in the story but Hogan's prose pulled me forward until I became hooked on the characters and the unusual plot. I'm not sure the story lends itself to a sequel, but if Hogan decides to revisit the character, I'd be happy to read more about his peculiar obsession.

RECOMMENDED