The plan was to read a few pages, maybe the first chapter, and then put The House Hunt down and read an earlier book by the author, British crime and mystery writer CM Ewan (also known as Chris Ewan, creator of the Good Thief series).
It turned out that Ewan’s latest thriller was impossible to put down.
If I had been wearing something with a lapel, the book would have grabbed me and not let go. It might even have shaken me a little. It was screaming to be finished in one go, but I couldn’t. It took me a couple of days – which is even better. Is there anything better than a book that grabs you by the lapel and waits to be read?
Anyone who has put their house up for sale will know what house hunting is like, especially the anxiety that comes with it, and even more so if you’re a Londoner called Lucy who has just renovated a house that your boyfriend Sam inherited. The pair have done most of the work themselves and spared no expense. Despite all the effort they’ve put in, they’re selling because they’ve decided to leave London for good: “A blank slate. Starting over again.”
From the very first sentence, you can tell that something is wrong, that the anxiety surrounding this property purchase is in a class of its own: “Paranoia haunts me when I vacuum the house and Sam isn’t there.” Lucy is preparing the house for a viewing, but she is also preparing herself. Her nervous breakdown seems to be connected to her mysterious references to “what happened to me.”
Lucy doesn’t like being alone; she likes being around strangers even less. Her plan was to go to a nearby cafe while her real estate agent, Bethany, shows the house to the potential buyer. Then Bethany calls. Leaves a voicemail. She’s late. The viewing is in 15 minutes.
Lucy thinks she could turn him down, but her “debts are mounting beyond measure” and she and Sam need an offer from this potential buyer. She has to accept this, even though it won’t be easy. Lucy does what she never wanted to do: she lets a stranger into her house.
Ewan skillfully manages to build the trust between the characters and the reader necessary to maintain the tension. Lucy is suspicious and anxious from the start, so Ewan must show her – and us – a way to move forward. (The most sensible thing to do would be for her to reschedule the performance, after all.) He does this by alternating Lucy’s first-person narration with narrative chapters featuring Sam, a lecturer in psychology and behavioral sciences at the London School of Economics.
