We’ll keep the Summer of Scandal going by breaking down the systems that enable Rich People to act up. There are certain levels of excess that can only happen when people are paid to make them so. When these systems work smoothly, they’re almost invisible – it can just seem like the wealthy have charmed lives… So it takes a real breakdown to truly untangle these threads. And what’s a bigger breakdown than a heist?
Enter The Housekeepers by Alex Hay. The titular housekeepers are ex-employees of the wealthy de Vries family, and they’re planning a heist. When the household lets the head housekeeper go, she immediately pulls together a crew to orchestrate an extremely comprehensive theft. Unlike most heist stories, Mrs. King’s crew isn’t going after any one object. Instead, they’re ready to strip the whole house bare. If that weren’t difficult enough, they want to pull the whole thing off during a ball, when the house will be at its most occupied.
But Mrs. King and the crew have certain advantages. From their years of work there, they know the house inside and out. They know, too, its patterns of care – who does what, when; who’s likely to react, and how. And they know its darkest secrets – because when you serve a Misbehaving Rich Person, it’s almost impossible not to get caught in the crossfire.
The infrastructure of entitlements
Mystery novels are full of servants, unseen, causing trouble. Detective blithely and sagely say things like, “nobody notices the help,” and then we just take it for granted that’s all the explanation needed. Yet rarely do authors give these characters credit for their plans – for the ingenuity required to make them and the spirit required to execute. Even more rarely do readers get to spend time with them, to understand their intent and goals.
In The Housekeepers, Alex Hay turns this formula on its head. The novel opens with Mrs. King, the head housekeeper of the de Vries home, getting fired. We get to watch the typical heist scenes – the recruitment, the recon, the prep, the heist itself. The women are impressively good at their respective roles. (One minor complaint, in fact, is that the heist itself might be too easy, à la Ocean’s Eight.) And it’s they get pleasure in their success, in their ability to gain and maintain control of a world that ignores them.
Take a seemingly reliable system like the post, for example. Given that their plan centers on the ball, the crew wants to control the attendance list – aka posted invitations. While some might expect messing with government systems to be tricky, the crew simply intercepts invites at the door, using their knowledge of servant incentives to gain control of the invite list. Their social engineering goes off without a hitch, allowing multiple other elements of their plan to fall into place.
Every element of Mrs. King’s plan relies on her deep knowledge of the interconnected systems that keep an upper-crust house running. Members of that upper-crust, meanwhile, take advantage of those systems and use them to track loftier (and sometimes shadier) goals. Because they’re rich and influential, they command protection, warping investigative systems around them. And the halo they create allows plenty of other darkness to fester, until someone like Mrs. King comes along.
When things get personal
Mrs. King’s crew is effective not only because of their technical prowess. (While it’s fun to read about mastery, it can get boring after a while.) Instead, each member of the crew hides a secret related to their time with the de Vries family. For these women, this is more than a job – it’s a symbol, and a personal one.
I won’t go too far into the details of each crew member’s story, as it feels too close to spoilers. Suffice it to say that each of these women has suffered, directly or indirectly, from her association with the household. At times, it’s suffering caused intentionally, someone hurt to extract more value for the counterparty. But equally often, it’s hurt caused by negligence – what the de Vries family lets happen to those they pay and feed.
So we see two sides of “rich people, behaving badly” – abusing their outsized power when it helps them, while ignoring any duty to protect. Hay makes clear in The Housekeepers that each is harmful. He drives this point home in his portrayal of Madam de Vries, the crew’s effective nemesis. She’s calculating and ambitious, trying hard to climb the social ladder. But her needs come at the expense of those around her, and she doesn’t care who she hurts. It’s thus quite satisfying to watch Mrs. King’s plan unfold in parallel. It’s hard not to root for those getting out of the crossfire and taking back their control.
Reading notes!
If I have one criticism of this book, then, it’s that this theme may land too delicately. Hay takes his time telling each character’s story – but by the time the stories are out, there’s not really enough room to understand the full harm. In many ways, this is a novel of relationships, with a heist-y flavor: by the climax, it’s the people and their secrets that matter, not the mechanics of the plan. And that element could have landed more strongly had we more time with those secrets, especially the biggest ones.
But it’s a relatively minor gripe for a fun and fascinating read. One other point of fact – I’ve seen The Housekeepers tagged as “Mystery and Detective” – but like most heist stories, it’s more a reverse mystery. You spend your time trying to understand how and why this theft will occur – not unravel it after the fact. If “historical heist with a side of class consciousness” sounds up your alley, you’ll have a good time with this exploration of the impacts of rich folks misbehaving. And if you’re looking for your next “heist in high places” read – I’ve got a great review coming down the pipe!
Until then – stay cozy, and stay curious!
