14 Dec 2024
Aaron Gransby’s new novel, which name-checks the St Albans Times within its pages, delves beneath the polite façade of our city to ask: Just how far would you go to protect the standards of St Albans?
We all know how incredibly fortunate we are to live in our fabulous cathedral city. Not a day goes by when I don’t look around me and feel grateful for the last 15 years I have spent living here, having originally worked many years ago as a young sports journalist on a now defunct local paper.
But it is not just its remarkable combination of history, beautiful buildings, convenience and enviable facilities that make St Albans so special. It is also its people.
People who, by and large, understand that living here brings with it certain responsibilities about how we behave towards each other; how we understand and tolerate one another.
In fact, St Albans could be said to be the epitome of suburbia – somewhere people live happily side by side, being ever mindful of others.
Except when they don’t…
And it is this premise that underlies my new novel, based in St Albans, which delves beneath the polite façade of our city to ask just how far its residents would go to take revenge on neighbours who annoy them.
The Pest Controller is my fourth book, and the second to feature St Albans at its heart, following my 2022 debut, Outside.
In this book, The Pest Controller works in the manner of a private detective, tackling cases brought to him by local people who are fed-up with the antisocial behaviour of others – the pests – and devising ingenious and appropriate ways to teach them a lesson, while lining his own pockets at the same time.
The cases feature noisy neighbours, drivers who flout parking regulations or drive the wrong way down one-way streets, over-ambitious local councillors and reluctant recyclers.
Darkly humorous, the book moves easily from light to dark, featuring a tongue-in-cheek case about suburban swingers before taking aim at criminals and speculators who take advantage of the homeless and the housing crisis.
Many of the locales in the book will be well-known to St Albans residents and visitors while it deftly asks readers the question: How far would you go to safeguard the way of life you love?
Half the fun of the book is making you think what you would employ The Pest Controller to help you uphold the standards of St Albans.
For example, have you ever had your peace disturbed by an inconsiderate neighbour; been irritated by someone parking dangerously on double yellow lines; or spotted somebody filling your recycling containers because they can’t be bothered to use their own?
If you have and you’ve dreamt of creative and inventive ways to get your own back while quietly closing your front door and sighing in frustration, then you might be wishing The Pest Controller really existed.
He might not, but the truth is his ‘victims’ definitely do.
And one of the questions many authors get asked regularly by their readers is: “Are your characters based on real people or events?”
To which the answer on this occasion must, of course, be: “Certainly not.”
And if you believe that, dear reader, you will believe anything.
The Pest Controller is published by Gerard Books and is available as a hardback from aarongransby.com at £16.99; paperback at £9.99 and ebook at £3.99, both on Amazon.
