Full disclosure: I copyedited this book, which is by a personal friend. Anyone who's read enough of my reviews will know that I'm not going to let details like those affect my honesty as a critic, but I should disclose them up front. However, I didn't write the story or layout the book or paint the cover art, so I feel safe in reviewing it. If there's a comma in the wrong place, you can happily blame me. If you like or don't like the story, that's not my department.

There's no guarantee that I'm going to enjoy a book that I work on, but I enjoyed this one a great deal. Sure, part of that is because of its setting, which is Halifax, West Yorkshire, where I went to both school and work. I lived in and outside of Halifax for many years and the author still does, so he knows it very well. In particular, its primary location is the Whittaker Industrial Museum, which doesn't exist in our reality but is clearly based on the Calderdale Industrial Museum. That's quite literally a stone's throw away from a building I worked at for years. In fact, the distance from the museum to my old desk is as short as forty-feet.

However, it's also an easy novel to like, a gentle comedy caper in the vein of a lighter Tom Sharpe that grows into a surprisingly effective romance. I expected something like the former, just from the pun of the title, but I remember being surprised at how it evolved into the latter. One reason that this novel works so well is because it never loses track of either of these modes. We're always invested in the heist, even as we start to realise that we're also invested in the romance. And, as the romance builds between two characters, neither of whom, I should add, is the lead, we always maintain interest in the actual lead.

That's especially impressive because Gerald Frobisher isn't a particularly notable character. He's a decent man and he's good at what he does, which is serve as the museum's chief curator, but he breezes through life without much aim or purpose and he doesn't lead the book so much as let it happen to him. He's the sort of character who would be played in a feature adaptation by Martin Freeman. He's broadly liked, entirely reliable and it's perfectly believable when he saves the day, but he does so mostly through a combination of luck and entropy. That integrity also plays a part is almost an afterthought, because we don't think of him that way.

Mostly, we think of him as beleaguered. The patron of the museum is Reginald Bowes, MBE, OBE, and he's enough to test anyone's patience. He's the sort of soul who comes up with bright ideas to burden other people with and his latest bright idea is what this story hangs on. He decides that to bolster visitor numbers, the museum needs some sort of wow factor, which he'll promptly provide through the loan from the Victoria & Albert Museum of the Indian Raj Diamond Collection. It'll be a huge draw in Halifax, he assumes, blissfully ignorant of just how much work is needed to make it happen.

That's Gerald's problem, or problems, given that he has to deal with delivery, storage, insurance, security, upgrades to display cabinets and PR messages that might be entirely accurate but are a long way from what might be considered advisable. And he has to deal with Kevin Brisket, who's a museum intern, only there because his father doesn't want him working for him. He's unfailingly inept, with an unerring habit of taking even the simplest task and getting it horribly wrong. I dug his well-meaning deletion of other people's e-mail the most, after his cybersecurity training. And, of course, eventually Gerald will have to deal with the heist.

However, that takes a long while coming. Damian Paul builds it as a parallel thread; so, just as we watch Gerald work through everything that's needed to avoid a heist, the crew down south work through everything that's needed to make it succeed regardless. The lead villain is Terry "Tatts" Cromwell, who pretends to be an Eastender to play into the gangster aesthetic but has a habit of mangling any Cockney rhyming slang he uses, which he does often. He was already aiming for the jewels, at the V&A, and was three months into planning the heist with a team already in place. He sees the shift in location to Halifax as making it easier.

Thus far, we're only about a fifth of the way in, and a couple of supporting characters are about to move to the fore. One is Templeton "Four Fingers" Peck, so named for his fondness for KitKats (a welcome distraction from his homage of a pseudonym that nobody seems to recognise). He finds himself sent to Halifax to case the joint, gather information about the museum and its security and organise a base of operations for when the gang joins him. The other is Penelope Earnshaw, who's the rare book curator at the museum, in which role she's eager to deal with other human beings as little as possible. She has a powerful withering stare. Initially, Peck pursues her for her knowledge, but he soon realises that he actually cares and that changes everything.

All of these characters have plenty of time in the spotlight, enough so that we could easily dub it an ensemble piece. Gerald Frobisher is the book's lead and he's likeable enough to keep it rolling along nicely, with most of the rest of the cast mostly there to add to his problems and prompt his life to never be as straightforward as he wants. Terry "Tatts" will become the most notable such, but he's far from the first, Sgt. Throng of the Police Crime Prevention unit seizing that role early and Kevin the intern reliably adding to his woes. However, Fingers and Penelope are the leads in the gradually manifesting romance and, while one isn't who he claims to be, we can't help rooting for them.

Initially, the story proceeds in layers, the initial calmness of the museum being complicated by an incessant set of problems. Paul layers these on steadily without letting the drama get too serious. This is always a comedy first and foremost, even though it stays light, avoiding escalation into the outrageous and usually inappropriate skewering of institutions that Tom Sharpe got up to. As the story moves on, though, especially once the heist happens, it shifts into higher gear, broadening the setting to the countryside outside of Halifax and adding action and desperation, with a bunch of characters shuffled around to keep the dynamics fresh. Even ones that I didn't expect to have a lot to do are given moments to shine.

All in all, this is a novel that works differently over multiple readings. On a first read, it's the light tone that carries us through and we smile and laugh at the situation comedy, if quietly. A second underlines how well-drawn and delineated each of the characters is and we get more invested in a romantic angle that we probably weren't expecting. On a third, we appreciate the choreography of the piece, while spending time with old friends. If you spent any amount of time in Halifax, that goes double, because the setting is an old friend as well. I took my family to the same café in the Piece Hall that becomes a romantic spot for Fingers and Penelope.

Now I have to wonder what Damian Paul will write next. This novel works perfectly well on its own and doesn't need a sequel, but I could easily see another few comedic novels set in or around the town. I'd absolutely pay money to see Calderdale Council skewered comedically in the Tom Sharpe style. ~~ Hal C F Astell