Novel set in Overijssel 1961
Tales of LONDON’s super-prime property market
10th June 2025
Highly Desirable by Anonymous, Tales of London’s super-prime property market (plus the Cotswolds and Los Angeles)
Highly Desirable is a lot of fun! It’s a fascinating book, providing an entertaining insight into the buying and selling of their homes by the uber rich. It is set in 2022 and tells of the exploits of an anonymous estate agent, the “Secret Agent”, who also uses the pseudonym of Max Thomas. He has twenty years’ experience of selling super-prime properties costing tens of millions of pounds – mainly in London – on behalf of incredibly rich clients. He makes his money on the small percentage commission of the very large selling prices of the properties. While reading the book you get to experience the stresses of working with huge sums of money and difficult clients but also vicariously enjoy the highs that result when a buyer signs on the dotted line and the mega-bucks deal is done. In addition, the author gives us a variety of characters and relationships.
The book’s premise immediately appealed to me. I love property programmes on TV and I’ll even admit to a Rightmove habit which entails drooling over properties I could never afford or be bothered to dust! Max’s clients are not troubled by such trivialities, of course: they have staff after all. They have been careful to buy the right property, in the right place and for the right price and now, perhaps many years later, they want to sell it on. Often they are as fussy about who is permitted to buy their home as they are about the asking price. Max is keen to help them. It’s potentially a lucrative business but the clients’ quirks and demands are the challenges that he faces on a daily basis.
Max’s relationships – with clients, colleagues and lovers – are an especial delight. He is disarmingly honest about his own character faults and his therapy sessions are revealing. It has been said that estate agents are leeches with no scruples. This book reveals the nature of the work and Max describes levels of stress that would break many lesser mortals. That said, the tendency of his clients to adopt him as their best friend seems a little unlikely and Max does seem to be as needy as he says he is.
Whether this book is a work of fiction or non-fiction is up for debate. Max describes the three colleagues in his agency. They might or might not be composite or caricature figures. Natasha is a young woman with an upper-class background and John is an older resting actor. Both are well connected with wealthy and influential people. Damien is a relaxed Australian who likes to work out and network. Between them, they possess all the soft skills someone in their line of work could need. (And that we kind of suspect that actual estate agents don’t!) Equally, the author portrays his clients as ranging from the mildly eccentric to the downright difficult, on a scale that increases in direct correlation with their relative wealth. Each is given a pseudonymous nickname, so that their identity is concealed. Are “the Oscar Winner” and “the Billionaire” real people? It scarcely matters. The book is well-paced and absorbing, and I wanted to find out what happened with each client, as well as with the romantic liaisons that develop between the characters.
What about setting? Naturally for a book about property, location is critical and Max describes in detail the desirable areas of London where the properties are found. But he goes beyond the ‘estate agent particulars’ style of description to describe the settings in terms of their emotional connections. They are, after all, family homes. And not a single “comprises of” is mentioned in the entire book – hurrah! When the action moves to the countryside, we get a tongue-in-cheek analysis of life for the Cotswold Set, which revolves around Soho Farmhouse and Daylesford. But in contrast he mentions “the National Treasure” who lives quietly in her relatively modest manor house near Cirencester. There’s also a sharp contrast with life in LA, and Max frets at length over the wisdom of moving to the land of sunshine and beautiful people.
In summary, Highly Desirable is an enjoyable and easy-to-read confection of a book, which will inform and entertain.
Sue for the TripFiction team
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