Exit
Felix is an “Exiteer”—a volunteer companion to people who’ve made prior arrangements for a secret suicide to end an otherwise prolonged terminal illness. Exiteers don’t assist in the death: they are there just for company, and to afterward remove evidence of suicide so the death will be considered a natural death.
Felix is no spring chicken himself. He’s 75, a fussy retired accountant, a widower whose only son died painfully of cancer long ago, as a young man. Felix has now witnessed 27 deaths as an Exiteer, and all of them went according to plan.
So he’s shocked to discover that in this latest case, “we’ve killed the wrong man.” The dead man wasn’t the one who was supposed to die. Felix fears he’s helped facilitate a murder: he’s been set up. He sets out to find out what happened… and along the way, finds new meaning in his own life even as he dodges unexpected threats from dangerous criminals.
It’s not often that one would call a crime novel “delightful,” but I was charmed by Felix, who is perhaps the most unlikely of amateur sleuths.
Many passages in the book are funny, others are touching, even as the suspense builds. There are no “stock characters”—every single one is a distinct individual, from the elderly man who’s surprised to still be alive, to the police officers investigating the death, to Felix’ neighbour-cum-coconspirator, and even to the dogs and cats who have their own personalities.
When I came to the end I thought, “That’s sweet.” I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and loved every minute.
Belinda Bauer was born in 1962, growing up in England and South Africa. She was a journalist and screenwriter in the U. K. for some years before sitting down, at age 45, to write a novel to prove to her mother that she was a “real writer.”
She had trouble finding an agent or publisher for that novel, until a friend suggested she enter it in the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger contest for unpublished writers. Though she didn’t win, her novel was shortlisted. That near-win found her an agent and, almost immediately, a publisher for her debut novel, Blacklands, which then appeared in 2009. The following year Blacklands won the CWA Gold Dagger for Crime Novel of the Year, one of the rare debut novels to win that prize.
Bauer says she was initially surprised to learn that Blacklands was considered a crime novel, as this wasn’t a genre she spent any time reading. In her mind, she was writing about relationships. She was afraid that writing in this genre would be constricting, but has since realized that this isn’t the case: she can write about a great many things within the wide framework of crime fiction. She says, ““For me a book is always about the emotional journey.”
Her books are highly regarded. In fact, her eighth novel, Snap, was longlisted for the Booker Prize—one of the very few crime novels ever considered for that prize. Her books have now been translated into twenty-five languages.
Exit is Bauer’s ninth novel. She lives and writes in Wales.
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