William Heming is a successful Yorkshire real estate agent with several kinky streaks, mostly emanating from an unhappy childhood during which he put the family cat in the bassinet of his just-born baby brother.
In spite of the consequences of this bad start (his parents barely tolerate him), and being expelled from a posh English boarding school for stealing other boys' property, William finds a career that will allow him to indulge his penchant for invading other people's privacy.
He does this by having duplicate keys made of the properties he's commissioned to sell and making himself at home when the owners aren't. Naturally, this leads to complications. Can William wriggle out of the results of his home invasion while also obtaining his heart's desire, Abigail?
There's also the little problem of keeping ahead of the law. Readers who think good guys and bad guys are two sides of the same coin will hugely enjoy this novel, with a prose and subject style that's been compared with John Updike and Richard Yates.
- Ian Williams is a Dunedin writer and composer.
