Excerpt from High Dive by Jonathan Lee, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

He was happiest of all when talking to guests. If it wasn't for the editorial influence of deadlines and to-do lists, he could easily pass whole days discussing their get-richer ideas and much-mourned ailments, the Platonic ideal of a pillow, its consummate softness and girth. He liked to know every guest's name and to slowly fill out the lives underneath. When regulars were the kind of people who enjoyed saying hello he tended also to know the names of their children. When they went about their days closely guarding their privacy he nodded and smiled, held a mirror up to their reticence. Hospitality involved an aspect of surface flattery but also of deep familiarity. It was a peculiar combination of density and gauze. You were reading people all the time, reading and reading and reading, and only occasionally was his apparent fondness for people false. The odd smile delivered to a slick pinstriped guy who was really no more than a slippery fish in the sea of his own possessions. The occasional compliment to a woman whose post-operative breasts were even more determinedly inauthentic than her eyes—eyes that were blank screens upon which brief impressions of felt experience flickered. In the main, people were kind if you were kind. They wanted to have a good time. You gave them the best and worst of yourself. The huge lie that you would escalate their complaint to Head Office. Telling the truth, almost always, when you wished them a very good stay.

Mrs. Harrington from room 122 was doggedly crossing the lobby, swinging the walking stick she rarely seemed to need. Old Mrs. H was one of the Grand's most reliable regulars, and she only ever stayed in room numbers that added up to five. Many front-desk staff had learned her proclivities the hard way. "Room 240 is lovely, Mrs. Harrington." "I'd prefer not to, dear." "Room 301, perhaps?" "I'd prefer not to."

"Punctual as always, Mrs. Harrington."

"You," she said with a hospitable grimace. "Still poorly?"

"Poorly?"

"Pale."

"Me?"

"Roller-coaster," she said, and traced a wavy line in the air with the ferrule of her stick.

Moose tried to laugh but managed only the maintenance of his current smile.

"Arm pain," she said.

He felt his smile fail him. "How did you know?"

"You confided."

"Did I?"

For a moment her eyes slid sideways towards another regular, Miss Mullan. On every other week of the year she was Mr. Mullan, chairman of a FTSE 100 toiletries company.

"Perfectly fine now, thanks, Mrs. H. A little sprain. I'm not dead yet."

"Geoffrey said that. My Geoffrey, before he died."

"I'm sorry," Moose said. "That was thoughtless of me."

Mrs. H couldn't move her shoulders much, so to indicate a shrug she simply turned the palm of her right hand towards the ceiling. "His death," she said. "Second-best thing that ever happened to me."

"What was the first thing?"

"Motorcycle," she said, and continued her voyage towards the restaurant.

The breakfast crowd parted as she waved her stick on a low axis from side to side, as if it were white and she were blind, the wood knocking at shins and kneecaps, opening a path to where the best table was.

With Freya safely installed behind the reception desk, her chin on the heels of her hands, still frustratingly bad at disguising her boredom, he did his usual check of the restaurant (tidy) and the lavatories (shiny). He walked up to the first-floor storage room, where the hotel held long-term luggage and other items like cribs and wheelchairs. There had been a spontaneous staff party in the hotel last night and sure enough he now located, in a dusty corner, a few dozen miniature bottles of booze. A condom wrapper too. Jesus. An untouched Marathon bar. Interesting. He ate the Marathon and found Mimi from Housekeeping. Asked her to put the unused items back in the minibar cupboard and ensure that it was double-locked. No 1-1-1-1 combinations on padlocks, please. Then, coming down the thickly carpeted staircase, careful not to touch the handrail and impart unnecessary smudges, he passed Chef Harry's temperamental tabby cat, Barbara. Usually she begged for food. Lately she'd been depressed. Gave him a withering droopy-whiskered look that seemed to say "What's the point?"

Excerpted from High Dive by Jonathan Lee. Copyright © 2016 by Jonathan Lee. Excerpted by permission of Knopf. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.