A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering

Property might be theft. But the housing market is murder . . . A Beginner's Guide to Breaking and Entering is a gripping thriller about what it's like to be young, skilled, unemployed - and on the run.


Property might be theft. But the housing market is murder.

My name is Al. I live in wealthy people's second homes while their real owners are away.

I don’t rob them, I don’t damage anything… I’m more an unofficial house-sitter than an actual criminal.

Life is good.

Or it was - until last night, when my friends and I broke into the wrong place, on the wrong day, and someone wound up dead.

And now … now we’re in a great deal of trouble.

Review

Hilarious ― Daily Mail

Smart, satirical, knowledgable, accurate, punchy, laugh out loud funny, surprising, shocking, thought provoking. Lovely short chapters. Loved it ― Matt Chorley, The Times

Hugely entertaining…the novel is politically astute, gradually revealing a scam involving property and international money laundering. It’s laugh-out-loud funny, proceeding at a pace that makes it almost impossible to put down. ― Sunday Times

A propulsive plot, an ingenious narrator and lashings of intrigue make this a genuine and thoroughly enjoyable page-turner ― Guardian

The plot is corset-tight and lavish with its surprises. An amusing crime caper…a delight ― Strong Words Magazine

What drives Hunter Murray’s chunky crime thriller along is Al’s idiosyncratic, comic narrative voice. As a result, it’s fun to spend time with him, even when it’s clear he’s not necessarily a great human being ― Herald Scotland

Filled with humour, shocks, love and hate – and a few handy tips on how to beat the housing crisis… Funny, thoughtful and all-round entertaining ― Press Association

In the delicious A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering, a hapless housebreaker and his fellow miscreants must solve a murder before the police arrest them; it’s a comic delight. ― Financial Times

About the Author

Andrew Hunter Murray is a writer, broadcaster and comedian. He co-hosts the award-winning podcast No Such Thing As A Fish, which has received 500 million downloads and toured the world. He also writes jokes and journalism for Private Eye magazine, hosts the Eye's podcast Page 94, presents BBC Radio 4’s Friday night comedy The Naked Week, and spent 14 years writing BBC2’s QI.

His first novel, The Last Day, was a Sunday Times Top 10 bestseller, and one of the top 10 fiction debuts of 2020; his second, The Sanctuary, was a Waterstones Thriller of the Month; and his third, A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering, was shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic literature.

Andrew lives in London, in a house which largely belongs to someone else (Barclay’s).