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A Pleasure and a Calling: A Novel Audiobook
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Publisher Description
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.
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“Narrator Michael Page’s portrayalof this ‘sociopath next door’ will have listeners shopping for new door locks…Pageis right with them, sounding every bit the normal, vaguely middle-aged stuffedshirt Mr. Heming portrays himself to be, even as he recounts his inventivereprisals against those who have offended his twisted sense of right and wrong.”
— AudioFile
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“I loved A Pleasure and a Calling—gripping, sinister, original, and brilliant!”
— Sophie Hannah, New York Times bestselling author of The Monogram Murders -
“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.”
— Guardian (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.”
— Independent on Sunday (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) -
“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) -
“Delicious and addicting. William Heming joins the ranks of unforgettable, unreliable narrators in this gloriously creepy novel of psychological suspense.”
— Booklist (starred review) -
“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 -
“Hogan skillfully builds a character that combines Mr. Goodbar, Hannibal Lector, and Moriarty.”
— Kirkus Reviews
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About Phil Hogan
Phil Hogan was born in a small town in northern England and now lives in a small town in southern England. A journalist for twenty-five years, he has written for the Observer (London) and the Guardian (London). He is married with four children.
About Michael Page
Michael Page has been recording audiobooks since 1984 and has over two hundred titles to his credit. He has won numerous Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. As a professional actor, he has performed regularly since 1998 with the Peterborough Players in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He is a professor of theater at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.