Pleasure and a Calling (Hogan) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
The word "creepy" (attached to descriptive adverbs like "insanely" and "diabolically" or even "deliciously") immediately comes to mind after a quick dip into A Pleasure and a Calling.
Marilyn Stasio  - New York Times Book Review


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 Pleasure and a Calling starts out slowly, meticulously building the first-person portrait of a sociopath. But, 70 pages in, the novel takes a sharp turn into Patricia Highsmith country, and the deliberately bland, purposely forgettable Heming stands revealed as Tom Ripley with a real estate license….This is [Phil Hogan’s] first book to be published in the United States. Here’s hoping for more to come.
Dallas Morning News


Hogan avoids cliches as he delivers one surprise after another. Heming at first seems harmless, but Hogan shows bit by bit how Heming has been scheming and diabolical, making this complex character both a villain and a hero. A Pleasure and a Calling brims with wry wit and taut tension, and will make readers think about changing the locks on their doors, just to be cautious.
Associated Press


How mesmerizing is this book? I started it at lunch one day and finished it after dinner the same night….Reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley books.
Charlotte Observer


Beware, readers. Heming descends from a long line of dangerously seductive, alienated narcissists that includes Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley and Charles Anthony-Strangers on a Train-Bruno.…Hogan is an especially agile storyteller, and he has assembled an admirably intricate back-story that explains (if not excuses) how Heming has come to be who he is. It’s an exhilarating performance. Plan on having your locks changed soon after you finish reading the book.
Richmond Times-Dispatch


Engagingly written and compulsively readable…Readers will find themselves wondering just how secure their own homes are, and, at the same time, uncomfortably beguiled by the often charming Mr. Heming, whose heart is in the right place—except when it is decidedly not.
Columbus Dispatch


(Starred review.) 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


In Heming's character, Hogan has created a memorably creepy sociopath.... Hogan skillfully builds a character...[with d]eft characterization, but reading about someone this relentlessly unconscionable will make most readers lunge for the shower as soon as they've reached the final page.
Kirkus Reviews