Explore every episode of the podcast Fear and Leasing

A flat Wednesday drags Macready into the quiet horror of emails, office rituals, fake professionalism, and the kind of exhaustion that doesn’t make noise. In Chapter 6 of Fear and Leasing, the chaos briefly gives way to something worse: stillness, fluorescent dread, and the creeping suspicion that the job has started hollowing him out from the inside.

Ray Williams has a drill, a toolbox, and the terrifying confidence of a man who once nearly passed wood shop. In Chapter 5 of Fear and Leasing, a simple cupboard hinge becomes a hostage situation, before the office descends into a heatwave-fuelled civil war over air-conditioning, coconut water, and the very limits of workplace diplomacy.

Hungover, overheated, and trapped in a Grafton Street rental with a parade of increasingly alarming prospective tenants, Macready endures an open home from hell. In Chapter 4 of Fear and Leasing, termite hunters, fermentation influencers, drone-wary crypto nomads, possible ghosts, and eight allegedly well-behaved cats turn one Saturday morning into a slow-motion collapse.

A 2:47 a.m. phone call from Henderson, the owner of one very ordinary rental property and several extraordinary anxieties, drags Macready into a fresh circle of hell. In Chapter 3 of Fear and Leasing, shrinking skirting boards, surveillance-fuelled paranoia, and a blurry photo of a cloud push one property manager dangerously close to the edge.

Back at the office, Macready is summoned by Chad, his procedure-loving boss, for a post-Trevor debrief that quickly becomes less “professional reflection” and more fluorescent-lit interrogation. In Chapter 2 of Fear and Leasing, workplace diplomacy, tribunal fallout, and one truly cursed breach notice collide in another day at the property-management coalface.

It begins with mould, a hangover, and a phone call from the office: Unit 3 has gone feral again. In Chapter 1 of Fear and Leasing, John Macready meets Trevor, the tenant who turns a routine inspection into a full-scale descent into tropical rental madness. A darkly comic opening chapter filled with mildew, mushrooms, ferrets, and the creeping suspicion that this job may eventually kill him.