Occasionally, one runs across the dramatic device of the “unreliable narrator” in a mystery book. It’s an intriguing strategy for fooling readers, and a challenging one for a writer. The device of the unlikeable narrator is even less common, and a difficult one to pull off. First-time author Martyn Goodger has fulfilled that challenge in style in his mystery, Biding My Time, I am happy to report.

Alan Gadd is a commercial lawyer in a large firm in Cambridge, England. He is intelligent, meticulous and hard-working. He hopes to get a partnership on the basis of his legal expertise. However, there are other expectations in the job – one is supposed to get along with one’s colleagues and to fish for new clients outside work hours. Alan faces challenges in those areas.

Because the fact is, Alan is a jerk. He is arrogant, fiercely competitive, suspicious, vindictive, and a sneak. Other people barely exist for him – he only thinks of them in terms of how they affect his own interests. I suspect he may be on the autism scale, but the author doesn’t say that – quite correctly, because Alan is the narrator, and he possesses zero self-awareness.

Alan had a romantic relationship with Helen, one of his colleagues, until 10 weeks ago when she broke it off. He still obsesses over her, of course, and hates the other partner she’s dating now. This impels him to pay close attention to what she’s doing and who she sees – which will become important when she is suddenly the center of a police inquiry.

Mostly in order to try to catch out co-workers he resents, Alan sets himself to investigating the crime. Which will lead him, by sideways steps, to a truth that will put his life in danger.

Biding My Time was both fascinating and horrifying for this reader. It was fascinating to read such a well-conceived, well-written, and original story. And it was horrifying to identify as strongly as I did with a narrator whom I did not like one bit.

I don’t recall ever reading a book quite like Biding My Time, and I recommend it highly. Cautions for some sexual themes.