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A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering
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  • Published: 25 April 2024
  • ISBN: 9781804948347
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $38.00

A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering

Formats & editions
Paperback
2 Sept 2025
EBook
25 Apr 2024
Audiobook
25 Apr 2024
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Featuring crooked houses, dodgy coppers and a lot of lockpicking, 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.
__________

Love for The Sanctuary ...

'Imaginative and intriguing ... Andrew Hunter Murray is a young writer to watch.' Anthony Horowitz
'Absolutely brilliant. I'm thinking it needs to be made into a movie!' Zoe Ball
'Gripping, unsettling and original. Andrew Hunter Murray is a fabulous storyteller.' Tim Harford
'Rich in imagination and stylishly written ... Totally absorbing.' Paul Burke, Crime Time FM
  • Published: 25 April 2024
  • ISBN: 9781804948347
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $38.00
Categories:

About the author

Andrew Hunter Murray

Andrew Hunter Murray is a writer and broadcaster from London. His three previous novels (The Last Day, The Sanctuary, and A Beginner’s Guide To Breaking And Entering) have between them hit the Sunday Times top 10 bestseller charts, been Waterstones' Thriller of the Month and have been nominated for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize.

When not writing, Andrew presents The Naked Week on BBC Radio 4, co-hosts the award-winning smash podcast No Such Thing As A Fish, writes jokes and journalism for Private Eye magazine, and hosts the Eye’s podcast, Page 94.


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

portrait photo of Andrew Hunter Murray

Also by Andrew Hunter Murray

The Last Day
Bad Deeds
Jeeves Again
The Sanctuary
See all

Praise for A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering

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

I was hooked ... as it's filled with hilarious moments

Express