'A Pleasure and a Calling' by Phil Hogan

Almost immediately, the narrator, Mr. Heming, establishes himself as quietly repulsive or, considering the dead body mentioned in passing in paragraph three — the reader may almost miss it — perhaps dangerously detestable. A small-town real estate agent, Heming discourages use of his own first name, but seems nosy to the nth degree, initially. However, that’s not so odd: after all, such agents more or less invade homes.

Whoops! Heming’s petty, disgusting action taken against a negligent dog-walker in chapter one makes “nosy” inaccurate, as does an alarming admission: the man has copies of every key to every house he’s ever handled. The guy speaking to us, we realize, is clearly some sort of omni-stalker.

Dutifully, Hogan walks us through Heming’s development as a boy-voyeur (or near voyeur). He’s taken with the excitement, not so much sexual, of unearthing the private matters of his targets — and taking a few souvenirs, naturally. At one point, he steals a much more athletic student’s invitation to a party, which in turn leads to sleeping with the other boy’s girlfriend, which then leads to a nasty fight.

A Sharp bit of plotting

The tale jumps back to Heming’s “mature” adulthood, and he circles back to the dog-walker of Chapter One, Douglas Sharp, who for a while has seemed only a character touchstone that has been dropped. By this point, though, Heming’s actual repulsiveness has been mitigated a bit. He gives to charity, we learn, and at another point, he takes revenge in an amusing way against a boorish loudmouth.

Then Heming learns Sharp is involved with a much younger, attractive woman, Abigail Rice. He begins a focused investigation, which leads to a very exciting, albeit preadolescent, game of hide-and-seek in the library where the young woman works. This episode allows Heming to steal the contents of Abigail’s cell phone, which leads him to presumptive conclusions.

The narrator retreats into a practiced, cautious mode, and Hogan has a problem to wrestle with halfway through the book. How will he maintain a thus far slow-motion "thriller" about a central character who remains, as another character puts it, “that creep Heming”? If something “big” doesn't happen soon, the reader may discard the novel, because another 150 pages of slow-motion creepiness is not very alluring.

There will be a body, but whose?

Whatever Hogan's decision about action for his characters, it does not seem as though things could possibly end well, since we already know somebody’s going to wind up dead. In terms of plotting, Hogan faces a decision — how soon will the unnamed corpse be discovered? Will it be Sharp (surely!) — or could it be Abigail? Could it actually be an as yet unnamed or unexpected person? And if it’s discovered sooner than later, will Heming become a suspect?

You will have to decide for yourself about how well Hogan maintains interest. What you will see clearly, however, is that, just as the baseball card collector can’t love all his cards, Heming can’t stalk (he actually uses the word “love”) everybody, even in a small town, even if he thinks he can. What, if anything, will happen to such a “collector,” a man who freely admits that he always finds “the flaw in face-to-face relations that demeans the mystery, reveals beauty as a sham”?

Hogan’s answers are effectively disturbing.