Gwen Moffat lives in Cumbria. Her novels are set in remote communities ranging from the Hebrides to the American West. The crimes fit their environment, swelling that dreadful record of sin in the smiling countryside cited by Sherlock Holmes.
Al is a professional squatter: a homeless man who earns peanuts as a freelance photographer but, by virtue of his dexterity with locks, lives the life of Riley in luxurious mansions while the owners are away. Such a lifestyle demands finesse: total concentration and eidetic memory, and in his twenties Al feels he is past his best. He’s not incompetent, merely not in keeping with the times. He bungles a job, loses his cool, goes on the run and gets shanghaied by three others in the same game, but better because they have combined their gifts. Jonny is the technical one, integral with his computers, smart phones, contacts; Em is the disguise artist, her sister Elle the brains. Al is taken into the clan for his breaking and entering skills.
The future augurs well - and falls flat on its face when, at their first venture as a combo, a miscalculation leads to their entering a supposedly empty house to be confronted by the owner. And he has a gun - and he is shot by a mysterious visitor. The foiled squatters flee but in the absence of the killer they are themselves suspect.
A chase ensues: a cat-and-mouse pursuit with innumerable cats: police, gangsters, land agents, foreign nationals: all are after blood, sometimes each other’s but always that of the four mice. They, on the other hand, now wanted men and women, are conducting their own search, convinced that, if they can find the real murderer, they can hand him to the police and clear themselves (this is a fairy tale, not a police procedural). We follow them about London – the classy bits with single post codes and houses with price tags to match, through the Palace of Westminster to a crumbling tower block in a Sussex resort where Al steals a passport in order to fly to a “facilitator” in a palm-shaded office on an island in the Caribbean.
By the time you are halfway in this book you can no longer tell the difference between predator and prey. All are criminal. There are jokes on every page but the author is leading his readers from the start: initially with sly barbs at the filthy rich and proceeding to tax havens and money laundering and so, laterally, to corruption in the highest places and, finally, the involvement of foreign governments and espionage.
A curiously niche book, facetious yet sophisticated in its occasional plunge to slapstick but for all that, a satire verging on wicked. It’s timely but it won’t spark a revolution. Good try though.
