The Housekeepers - Alex Hay - ★★★.¼

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AUTHOR: Alex Hay
GENRE: Historical Crime Fiction, Heist.
RATING: 3.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: Ocean's Eleven (or rather, Ocean's Eight) meets Downton Abbey. Good premise, but tries too hard. A praiseworthy debut though.


Story Synopsis:
1905, London. When Mrs King is suddenly dismissed from her position as housekeeper at the de Vries home, she isn't worried because she has an ace plan up her sleeve. On the night of the de Vries's ball coming up about three weeks later, Mrs King, along with her carefully chosen group of six women, will strip the de Vries mansion of its valuables. Is this just a revenge for being fired, or does Mrs King have some ulterior motive? How will this heist proceed?
The story comes to us from the limited third person perspective of several key characters.


I've always enjoyed heist movies but hadn't ever considered if heist fiction would generate the same high in me. So when the opportunity to read this historical heist novel came up, I couldn't resist grabbing it.

On paper, this premise sounds wonderful to my ears. Historical fiction is among my favourite genres and an all-woman gang planning a revenge heist promises a delectable treat. However, a successful heist story ought to be simultaneously complicated and believable. That doesn't happen with this book, which ends up simplistic and farfetched.

I was pretty invested until the first half or so, despite the slow pace. I assumed that the extensive build-up would lead to a thrilling secret burglary being executed during the ball. But the actual heist fell quite flat. Not once was I biting my fingernails in anticipation or anxiety. Even when the hurdles started popping up, the tension didn't correspondingly surge upwards. I'm not exactly sure why this happened, but here are two guesses:

1. Despite the detailed backstories for the main characters, I never felt close to a single one. Each of them has a secret worry--in some cases, a major burden, but that never generated feelings of empathy in me. So when I couldn't connect with the characters, I automatically couldn't root for them.

2. This was a revenge heist and it should have stayed a revenge heist. Sadly, the book succumbs to the "kitchen sink syndrome" so common to debut novelists. Instead of sticking to a couple of solid reasons for wanting the heist, the book inserts a bucketload of themes, some of which were not even relevant to the main flow. When there's too much for the reader to worry about, there's too little to focus on and the overall impact gets diluted.

That doesn't mean that the book is a disaster. It offers quite a lot of value to its readers. I enjoyed the planning put into the heist, and also liked a couple of the minor characters. (The two Janes were the best! They deserved a bigger role.) The grandiose ball also seemed true to the flamboyant extravagance displayed by the wealthy in 1900s London.

More importantly, despite such a huge cast of characters, it is never confusing to remember who is who. This is even more significant when we keep in mind that the third-person narrative baton keeps shifting across various characters to give us a bird's eye view of the planning and implementation. The story is surprisingly easy to follow despite many intricacies and characters.

Maybe, just maybe, this plot was too ambitious for a debut novelist to carry off successfully. But there's no denying that he has the imagination as well as the talent. I love the promise he showed in this novel, and I'm sure that with some fine-tuning and experience, he can pen a winner. I'll keep an eye out for his future works.

At the same time, I think I'll stick to watching heist movies rather than reading heist novels. Such stories are more fun to watch, and this one too will make an outstanding movie if the thematic frills are edited out.

Recommended to those who will have more patience with a ponderous but interesting heist story.

My thanks to Headline and NetGalley for the DRC of “The Housekeepers”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

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