Never Say Murder

By Geoffrey Walters

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1598580507
• ISBN13: 9781598580501
• Release Date: December 2005
• Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing
• Length: 188 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.5" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Aptly Titled, Oddball Suspects

A truly oddball cast of suspects including a brooding, not-to-be trusted narrator who spins a paranoid tale. Tons of excellent dialog. Reminded me of both Wodehouse and Hemingway, two writers who use dialog to move the plot forward. Great "hooks" at the end of every chapter, which made me dive right into the next. And the stakes get higher with every scene, as the main character's life spirals out of control. NEVER SAY MURDER is very aptly titled because I was never sure until the very end if a murder had even been committed. The ending left my head spinning. Highly recommended.

Almost a pulp detective story, except there is no detective involved

As an alumni of the National Journalism Center and SUNY Fredonia, Geoffrey Walters is your basic crime journalist. He honed his writing as a crime and local politics reporter for the TIMES NEWSWEEKLY in Queens, New York. He has participated in the Gotham Writers Workshop in New York City. A law firm is the perfect place to find all the elements of crime: corruption; greed; vice; extortion; and murder. The class distinction between lawyers, judges, and secretaries, accounting personnel, and word processors is telling. For Greg Thackery, a normal guy who worked in the word processing pool, his biggest problem was dealing with a personal sex addiction and holding his fragile marriage together. But when his office mate, Marc, is threatened by one of the new Ivy-league lawyers, Stephen Dalrymple, over a document that should be run-of-the-mill, Gregory is the only person in the office who is suspicious. After Marc is found dead and Greg voices his suspicions horrible things begin to happen: he gets fired for downloaded porn on his machine, the fired Dalrymple begins an affair with his wife, and suddenly his own life isn't worth a nickel: "It's hard now to describe exactly how low I felt packing my bag and hoping somehow Jean would take me back. I'd lost my job. Someone had thoroughly discredited my reputation, probably preventing me from landing a similar job. The police wanted to talk to me again. I'd completely misjudged my co-workers. I had no idea about Marc's secret life, nor of Betty's and Bradshaw's. Betty had lied about me to Detective O'Sullivan. I nearly got into a fight with Dalrymple. Marc's kindly parents threw me out of their house. I could no longer trust my therapist. I'd fallen off the wagon big time. And probably I could no longer trust myself." NEVER SAY MURDER is almost a pulp detective story, except there is no detective involved. But Walters infuses his tale with all the great qualities of Nero Wolf's Archie. Greg is the hero and narrator of the story. There is a murderer out there and colorful characters who have something to hide. The plot takes place in New York, the Gotham of murder. A great tale! Shelley Glodowski Senior Reviewer

Snappy and interesting.

I loved this murder mystery. The author has a real flair for quirky characters, esp. his hero, who narrates the story. This is a believable, funny first-person narrative which seems to come from a real, living, thinking, opinionated person. The setting, NYC, is familiar, yet the author gives it a twist by setting it in a word processing center of a NY law firm and we get the lower echelon view of what it's like to work for the big boys. The author takes us further afield, into upstate New York and he is able to evoke both locations specifically, colorfully and with authority. The story is good fun and it's never clear until near the very end whether we should really say "murder" or not. Fun to read. Hope a sequel to this book is published soon.