A Pleasure and a Calling

William Heming is what you might call a pillar of the community. He is devoted to his job running a small town estate agency. He gives generously to charity, but prefers to remain in the background. And of course he always has the best interests of the town at heart.

A Pleasure and a Calling is something just a little bit different when it comes to crime fiction. In some ways, it almost has an American small town feel to it – I found myself checking at the start that it was in fact set in the UK.

Plot-wise, there's not a lot there. The central premise really revolves around that rather spooky thought – when you bought your house, did you change the locks? And has it ever occurred to you that someone might be poking around in your belonging when you're not there?

The very respectable Mr Heming just likes to keep an eye on the houses he's sold – after all, the town doesn't want the wrong sort of folk there. However, a run-in with an unpleasant chap, and then infatuation with the bloke's girlfriend causes all sorts of problems for him.

Heming has echoes of Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley, in that these awfully inconvenient dead bodies threaten to disturb his very civilised way of life. And Hogan drip-feeds us back story from the main character's childhood to explain how he found himself in this profession that he takes so seriously.

A Pleasure and a Calling is a thoroughly intriguing read, delivered in a nicely understated tone. But it's oddly low on tension at times. I found it engaging enough but it didn't quite deliver – possibly because Heming lacks the roundedness that Highsmith gave Ripley, and also because the supporting cast are thinly-drawn. Full marks, though, to Hogan for trying something a bit different that marries a town where any of us could live with flashes of black humour and worried glances at your home.

After you've finished A Pleasure and a Calling, your first action will be to reach for the phone and to telephone a locksmith!