Take PJ Ellis’s Love and Other Scams, a glorious debut romcom telling the story of two con-artists plotting a diamond robbery at London’s ritziest wedding.
Or Sophie Wan’s Women of Good Fortune, coming in March 2024, a fast and fabulous story about bride-to-be Lulu, grudgingly marrying an eligible Shanghai bachelor while her friends plot to steal her wedding gifts.
Or – if I may be so bold – my own historical heist, The Housekeepers, which publishes in July 2023. Set in London in 1905, it tells the story of sharp-witted Mrs King, dismissed from one of Mayfair’s grandest mansions, and about to launch the most audacious robbery high society has ever seen in order to get her revenge.
What makes a heist a joy to read – and write?
Well, from this author’s perspective, it’s all about structure. For heists have rules. We need a glorious prize, a thousand obstacles, a set of fearsome opponents guarding their treasures. And the prize at the heart of the novel can be metaphorical as well as literal. So it goes in The Housekeepers. For Mrs King, leading a gang of former servants and criminal associates, is certainly seeking a fortune – but she’s also after something more subtle and slippery altogether: the truth. Answers to questions that have nagged at her all her life…
Mrs King’s path has clear milestones, ordained by the archetypes of the heist plot: gathering her team, unveiling her plan, running side-jobs here, overseeing double-crossings there. We get surprises, scandals, subterfuge, secrets. And, perhaps most important of all – friendship. Loyalty. The coming-together of a merry band wreaking revenge upon their world – or delivering justice, however you look at it. For of course the heist must operate to its own unique moral code – and that’s all part of the delight.
The Housekeepers has been described as Upstairs Downstairs meets Ocean’s Eleven which is possibly THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT that could ever be bestowed upon it. The iconic Danny Ocean is of course the perfect example of a heist protagonist. Cool-headed, charismatic, secretive; he drives his team, and his story, with verve and ambition, and we are gripped as well. It was the remote, sardonic qualities of the heist leader that I was channelling when creating my very own Mrs King. Because it takes more than gumption to rob a Las Vegas casino – or a glorious Park Lane mansion. You need a chip of ice in the heart, a certain audacious self-belief, too.
Perhaps this is what lured me into writing a heist most of all. Haven’t we all wished, at times, to right the wrongs around us? Haven’t we all felt squashed, put-down, bypassed, jaded? I started writing The Housekeepers in the summer of 2020, as we emerged from the first grim lockdown at the start of the Coronavirus pandemic. Work was stressful. Life was scary. And writing Mrs King was my escape. I entered her world – licked with all the delicious textures and tones of the past – but I entered her mindset, too. And this was the real treat. I gave her the traits I deeply admire: resilience, ambition, capability, compassion. And those I don’t (but must admit I share): envy, impatience, irritability. But through Mrs King I could raze my enemies to the ground, lift my friends to the skies – and earn myself a splendid fortune (and a glorious 1905 model Rolls Royce) along the way.
Wish-fulfilment? Absolutely.
A joy to write? Unendingly.
In chapter one of The Housekeepers, Mrs King is dismissed from her post, thrown out of the opulent mansion she’s served for over twenty years. As she marches through the back gate, she plucks a wildflower from the ground. Her first theft. Or rather, her first correction. “It wasn’t simply stealing, not at all,” she thinks. And at the end of the day, this is why I love heist plots. They aren’t just about crimes. They’re not simply tales of cops and robbers. They’re about possession and self-possession, about determination. They’re about belonging. In other words: the stuff of life.
And novels.
The Housekeepers by Alex Hay (Headline)
Upstairs, Madam is planing the party of the season. Downstairs, the servants are plotting the heist of the century. When Mrs King, housekeeper to the most illustrious home in Mayfair, is suddenly dismissed after years of loyal service, she knows just who to recruit to help her take revenge. A black-market queen out to settle her scores. An actress desperate for a magnificent part. A seamstress dreaming of a better life. And Mrs King's predecessor, who has been keeping the dark secrets of Park Lane far too long. Mrs King has an audacious plan in mind, one that will reunite her women in the depths of the house on the night of a magnificent ball - and play out right under the noses of her former employers... They come from nothing, but they'll leave with everything.
Alex Hay’s debut novel, The Housekeepers is published by Headline on July 6th.
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