Very different from his first novel (and I haven’t read his second!) – the premise of this book sounded so much fun: a guy who house sits for rich people, except they don’t know it. You might call him a squatter, he calls himself an interloper. He stays in wealthy people’s second homes when he knows they’re away, and leaves no trace – fun, yes?!
I thought the whole book was going to be based around this, and in a way it is, but really it’s more that that’s the set up for the story, which is sort of a murder mystery while on the run as suspects. I don’t think that gives too much away as it’s on the back of the book! It’s even narrated from the information suite in his prison…
I really enjoyed it, there’s a good amount of fun among the drama, and a few niche British references that would make Richard Osman proud! (eg: “I wonder fleetingly whether the police and the Bake Off crew get their marquees from the same firm.”).
There was also a wonderful anecdote about Ann Hicks, who sold apples in Hyde Park in the 1830s, built a tiny shack to sell from, gradually added to it, windows, doors, extended upwards, until she had a two storey house and a shop front in the middle of Hyde Park. Due to patchy records, she ended up being paid a weekly allowance by the Duke of Wellington to leave so they could build a bit crystal palace – a brilliant story, and clearly Hunter Murray’s QI-elf-ness hasn’t completely left him!
I think what I’d really like is a prequel, maybe a series of short stories of his escapades before this whole incident kicked off, of life as an interloper. It’s fun in this book to learn of his series of rules of interloping, but there must be stories from where some of them came from that could be a good premise.
A couple of excellent lines:
- “I have a faint memory that impersonating a police officer is a crime that comes with an especially long sentence. The police don’t like it when you do impressions of them. (I find this particularly unfair, because apparently they’re allowed to do impressions of normal people and that’s just ‘undercover work’.)”
- “You may have noticed that I’ve also changed Qumar’s name, from a country you will be familiar with to a fake country they use in The West Wing when they needed somewhere for President Bartlet to bomb. If Aaron Sorkin objects to me lifting the name, he can sue me. I’m literally writing this from prison and have no fear of copyright infringement.”
- “I do look up the price of ferry tickets, then a few property portals to see how much the average mountain chalet sets you back these days (a lot, it turns out; these ski people must be made of money and still they choose to go somewhere cold? Insane)”
ineke.co.uk 