A FAIRLY DANGEROUS THING
by Reginald Hill
Like last season's A Very Good Hater: another early Hill crime-novel (preceding his impressive Yorkshire-cop series), this one featuring a youngish British schoolteacher who gets reluctantly caught up in a heist-caper. Joe Askern, whose primary concern is finding female companionship (he frets, amusingly, about taking colleague Maggie Cohen home to meet his mum), suddenly finds himself being shadowed by one Cess Carter—the hulking father of Joe's least favorite, most juvenile-delinquent pupil. Eventually, after a few bizarre run-ins with Carter and his seductive moll, Joe is let in on what's going on: thug Carter needs Joe's expert help in planning a robbery of stately country-house Averingerett. Joe declines; Carter uses blackmail and threats; Joe goes along—especially after a run-in with the foul heir to Averingerett. So the heist is on, but with complications galore: there's a fire; the crooks stumble upon a blue-blooded orgy; and Joe's off-and-on girlfriend Maggie winds up in the middle of the action, first trussed up, then helping in the escape-finale. None of the plot-pizazz of other Hill creations, but plenty of crisp amusement in Joe's sexual frustrations and enforced crime-role.