Review: Exit by Belinda Bauer

The last couple of years of Felix Pink’s life have been hell. After his son loses his battle against cancer, it’s just Felix and Margaret, until she passes, too. Now it’s just Felix and his dog, Mabel. At seventy-five, he knows he doesn’t have much time left, but he’s using it well. You see, Felix is an Exiteer. He works for a company that ensures other families don’t suffer the way he did – they accompany terminally ill patients to the afterlife, to ensure the dying are surrounded by a calm, respectful presence. It’s not a job for everyone, which is why Felix understands when his partner, Chris, resigns.

But when Felix sees his new partner, 23-year-old Amanda, he has doubts. And when she accompanies him to her first job, things go terribly wrong, but it’s not just her fault. Shockingly, they helped the wrong person Exit. They killed the wrong man. To make matters worse, it seems they were set up.

As Felix tried to navigate his new existence as a murderer, he also wants to make amends. Determined to make sense of the error, he starts to investigate, and discovers that there is far more to the sordid affair than he could ever have imagined.

Exit is an unexpected treat from the first sentence. Not only do we have an unconventional protagonist in the form of a boring and bumbling pensioner, but it’s so well written and so cleverly woven together that it made me wonder why more books don’t feature aged and unexpected protagonists. The world, or a life, can’t always be saved by an angsty teen with Hollywood hair.

But there’s more to a good book than a good hero. In Exit, Belinda Bauer has carefully woven together a complicated story that is so thoroughly edited it makes it near impossible to predict the ending – and I’ve made a lifelong habit of predicting the end to whodunnits. It’s beyond refreshing to not see how the entire plot will play out by Part Two.

Bauer is ticking all the boxes. Excellent protagonist in an impeccable story, complete with poetic prose and a gratifying dash of the macabre? There’s nothing to fault in this book. So what are you waiting for – go on and read it. Thank me later.  

Exit by Belinda Bauer is published by Bantam Press, an imprint of Transworld Publishers, a Penguin Random House company.