A complete change of style for Slaughter and I would imagine a disappointing one for most of her fans.
Instead of the usual violent and bloody stories she usually writes,what we have here is a short black comedy.
The main character is Martin Reed,a mother dominated loser,who works in the office of 'Southern Toilet Supply'. His life changes suddenly when he is accused of a murder followed closely by yet another.
One of the police officers,Detective Anther Albada,becomes rather more interested in him than the case warrants.
This is the ideal book to while away a few spare hours,but it does leave the reader curiously unsatisfied at the end. ( )

Martin is the butt of everyone's jokes, including co-workers and his mother. When he is arrested and charged with a co-workers murder he lets things take there course and ends up on death row.

Martin is a character you want to reach in and slap some sense into. He knows who the real killer is but does nothing about it and then to make matters worse he continues to confess to crimes that he has nothing to do with.

Very quick and easy to read if you have an hour to kill. ( )

Martin Reed is one of life's losers, and has always been the victim of bullies, the worst of which is probably his own mother, who he still lives with. He works at Southern Toilet Supply and is resigned to the fact that he will probably have an uneventful and unexceptional life. Until one of his co-workers is found murdered. Martin quickly becomes the main suspect, and his refusal to provide an alibi does not help him at all. Events seem to take on a life of their own, and Martin finds himself getting deeper and deeper into trouble.

Even the reader does not really know until the end whether Martin is guilty or not - and I'm not going to spoil the surprise for you!

As a fan of Karin Slaughter’s ‘Grant County’ series, I was excited by the prospect of this book. However, while it is not a bad read, it is disappointing in comparison to that series. For fans of the Grant County series, it is worth noting that this book is entirely different in tone.

I felt it very difficult to empathise or sympathise with Martin or Anther, who are the main two characters in the book. I also found the other characters quite unbelievable, and Martin’s mother was horrible (although she was intended to be).

The whole sequence of events just seemed a little too convenient, as though the author had the end in mind very early on, and fitted the storyline around it. It should be noted however that this is a very short book, and so events did move quicker than you perhaps would have expected them to.

There is a twist at the end, but it didn’t particularly shock me, and there was a gaping plot hole in the final denounement.

If all this sounds very critical, it is not meant to. While the book is underwhelming, it is a reasonable enough way to pass a couple of hours. I actually listened to it on audiobook, which may have contributed to the reasons why I didn’t enjoy it as much as I might have. Unfortunately, the narrator, Walter Lewis, had a voice which grated on me, and I didn’t like the accents he used when speaking the parts of the various characters.

So all in all, not dreadful, but not one to seek out. ( )

Martin Reed has always been bullied since school and this has carried onto his worklife. So much so he has hired a woman he did not want to work with and has his office right next to the toilets.

Also he keeps finding his car vandalised - who is picking on him? Why do bodies of work colleagues turn up dead? And why does it look like he is the primt suspect?

A who-dunnit with a twist at the end which makes this book a great read. At times you think Karin Slaughter is poking fun at her own genre and writers but you can never be sure. But it is written with a certain amount of humour in it. Normally writers who stray from their set characters don't always succeed - but this book does. It is well worth reading. And if youa re sitting comfortably can be done in a day with a content feeling at the end. ( )

STORY (no spoilers): The plot could be interesting. Multiple points of view allow us to watch from inside and out as a man's life goes drastically off the rails. Martin starts out as an accountant at a toilet supply company who still lives with his mother...and then things go awry. Or maybe not so much, from his perspective. There are parts that are funny--the products at the toilet supply company, for example, are a riot--but the plot moves painfully slowly as we are given multiple asides into the heads of various characters.

And there's not much in those heads to attract a reader. I couldn't "root for" anyone. Martin is completely self-obsessed, as is An, the lead detective investigating the murder of Martin's co-worker. They're both pathetic and whiny, though I will say they both have very rich fantasy lives.

READING: I think part of the problem with this book may have been the audiobook factor. So much takes place inside the heads of the various characters that it might be easier to do the necessary skipping around in time if you had visual cues. Wayne Knight is not a bad reader--his voice is smooth, not at all grating--but there's little demarcation when one switches into interior monologue or flashback which makes following the story somewhat confusing at times.

All in all, I wouldn't recommend this, which I am sorry to say since I was hoping Slaughter would have done something different from the norm that I could follow as I once followed her thrillers. ( )