The Book of Murder

Written by Guillermo Martinez

Narrated by T. Ryder Smith

Hailed as a "clever, chilling novel that takes crime writing to a new level" by London's Sunday Times, this psychological thriller from Guillermo MartInez will captivate mystery lovers and literature buffs alike. An extremely successful author named Kloster and an unnamed, up-andcoming writer have one thing in common-they've both employed a typist named Luciana. Now Luciana claims Kloster is killing off her family, and she desperately needs help.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 13, 2009
• ISBN: 9781440709265

Reviews for The Book of Murder

[vivienner_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Set in Buenos Aires, this book had my attention from the first page. It is very well-written and the mystery was intriguing. I had made up my mind which character I believed and just needed to know the truth behind the murders. Were they even murders? However, it had a very different ending to what I expected, which felt like a letdown. There is no doubt the solution was clever, but still an anticlimax.

[daftboy1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This story is set in Argentina Main character who writes novels (we never know his name) is contacted by a woman he knew 10 years ago.She said that a famous writer she also worked for is killing off her family.This is an ok book makes you think.

[cebellol · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I... I don't know where to begin with this book. It puzzled me, to say the least. I wanted more, but at the same time (in some instances) I wanted less. The narrator, though part of the story, really just seemed to be along for the ride, but we didn't really get a lot about what HE though, only that he didn't know what to believe. That felt like a cop-out to me.

To be honest, this is one you really just have to read and figure out for yourself. There's no explaining it.

[cbl_tn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

*This review is necessarily spoilerish, so proceed with caution if you haven't read the book.*Ten years ago, the unnamed narrator had broken his wrist and, at the suggestion of his publisher, he hired a typist so that he could continue writing while his wrist healed. The young typist, Luciana, already had experience working for an established writer. The narrator is surprised to hear from Luciana after ten years, and he agrees to meet her to hear her story. Her fiance and most of her family have died since the narrator last saw her. She is certain that Kloster, the famous novelist she worked for, caused their deaths, and that he plans to continue killing those closest to her. She recognizes details from the novels Kloster dictated to her. Perhaps against his better judgment, the narrator agrees to become involved. He becomes alarmed when he perceives a pattern in the deaths, but the interpretation depends on one's perspective. What is true and what is real, and are these even the same?This postmodern crime novel leaves readers with more questions than answers. There is no question that there have been deaths. But were they murders? And which came first – death or the thought of death? Whose version of truth should the narrator accept – Luciana's or Kloster's? Can we even trust the narrator? There will be as many opinions as there are readers, and an individual reader's opinion will probably change with each reading.

[johngrant1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ten years ago the novelist who's our narrator injured his hand and for a few weeks needed a secretary to transcribe his words to the computer. Luckily the older and more successful novelist Kloster was going off for a month's trip, and so our narrator was able to "borrow" the young student who'd been doing Kloster's transcription, Luciana. Now, out of the blue, Luciana reappears in the narrator's life, telling him a fantastic tale of how she sued Kloster for sexual harassment, how the suit's consequences destroyed his private life -- though not his writing career, far from it -- and how by way of revenge he has engineered the deaths of her lover, her parents, her brother . . .

I found this shortish book in the Mystery section of my local library, which is hardly the place to shelve it, since it's not really a mystery/thriller but a reflection on the sort of grey overlap, so far as novelists are concerned, between real life and the fiction they write. In this sense it occupies very much the same sort of territory as my own novella The Lonely Hunter, which, likewise with a writer as its somewhat unreliable narrator, similarly takes some of the tokens of the murder mystery and puts them to a different purpose; in other words, The Book of Murder could have been written with me in mind, hurrah, and I was absorbed in it from the first line.

Along with the narrator, I tend to believe Luciana's version of events when she's telling them, Kloster's when finally the narrator manages to confront the man and demand an explanation. Then, when Luciana's family takes yet another hit, the cruelest yet, we have a second explanation from Kloster of what's really going on, one that seems persuasively plausibly and risibly fantastic at the same time. Is it safe to accept this final interpretation? The narrator doesn't know. It's up to the reader to decide what to believe, if anything.

As you'll guess, I liked this book a very great deal -- far more, in fact, than the author's rather better known The Oxford Murders, which I read a few years ago and enjoyed only moderately. I may even have to go out and buy myself a copy . . .

[pussreboots · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Book of Murder by Guillermo Martinez is another of those long time wishlist books, on the list since the book was first published. Since it's an Argentinean mystery, I either learned about it via NPR or BBC radio. Regardless, I'm glad I added it to my list.An author on a deadline has to hire a typist when he breaks his wrist. He's sent Luciana, a young, beautiful and efficient typist. The author meets his deadline and that's the last he thinks of her for a decade, until she reappears with an outlandish story involving her long time employer.Luciana has been working for a well respected author — Kloster — who has a bit of a reputation. Her story, though, goes well beyond the stories and into depravity. If she is to be believed, he has been systematically killing everyone near and dear to her. She asks the un-named narrator to help prove Kloster is behind all these deaths.Slowly but surely, Martinez builds the tension, leaving clues that point to Kloster, and just as many that point to Luciana making everything up. The narrator gets further and further involved, until he is also in danger, but he's not sure where the danger is coming from.Martinez's book reads like a blend between a Daphne du Maurier thriller and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It's everything I had hoped Stieg Larsson's first book would be but for me wasn't. It was just the right balance of mystery, suspense, old secrets and new dangers.

[debavp · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a quick read and that’s a good thing. Nothing about any of the characters is compelling other than they all tend to get on one’s nerves a bit at times. It’s an interesting little story, but not much more than that. 

[nocto_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An enjoyable literary take on a murder mystery. Luciana, who once worked taking dictation from a famous writer, is convinced the writer is conspiring to murder her friends and family after she made accusations against him. It's not really a plot driven story so I shouldn't really mark it down for having a pretty far fetched plot that doesn't really hang together, but in the end I think I do. The ending just seems a bit weak and obvious. I wasn't expecting all the threads to be tied up and the author concluded the book in a tighter manner than I expected. The story does zip along nicely and it's an easy read. It just seemed to be missing something in the end.

[auntmarge64 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An interesting tale of a writer who tries to unravel the truth between two opposite but equally believable versions of a series of deaths. The narrator is approached by woman whose secretarial services he had shared briefly ten years earlier with a famous novelist. She is a wreck and believes that the novelist has been slowly killing off her family in revenge for an action which led to the death of his young daughter. The writer approaches the novelist and hears a completely different interpretation of the events, and his involvement causes further tragedy. Not a major novel, but an intense reading experience for a few hours.

[marient_5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Kloster is a literary giant whose distrubing crime novels dominate the best-seller lists. The narrator and Kloster have shared a secretary who has disturbing murders in her family and she is convinced that Kloster has something to do with it.

[piratejenny_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The unnamed narrator is asked by a former typist of his, Luciana, for his help. Since she left his employ years ago, people around her have been dying. She is convinced this is the doing of bestselling author Kloster. Obviously this sounds insane, especially since neither writer has met the other--how will our narrator even confront such a man? See, Luciana worked for Kloster as well and since an incident during that time, she's seen him around the deaths or funerals of those she loved. And though it sounds insane, our narrator is intrigued despite himself and decides to help Luciana.This mystery is concerned with the nature, the idea, of reality and of sanity. It certainly made me think about both.

[1morechapter · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"There are times in life — not many — when you can see, with dizzying clarity, the fatal fork in the road represented by one small act, the catastrophe that lurks behind a trivial decision."A few weeks ago I posted about the literature in translation I had read so far this year and was surprised to note that I hadn’t read any titles translated from Spanish. Even though I should have saved this book for the Latin American Challenge in 2009, I decided to go ahead and read it because I really wanted a Spanish title on my list for this year.Guillermo Martinez is a writer I’ve been meaning to read for awhile now because he’s from Argentina (which I visited earlier this year) and he’s also a professor of mathematics (and I’m a geeky former engineer). I had known about his book The Oxford Murders and I plan on reading it in 2009. I really want to know how he combines math with murder in that one!The Book of Murder isn’t about math, but it does take place in Argentina. It begins with the narrator (who is a novelist) receiving a desperate call from Luciana, a girl who had worked for him previously as a transcriptionist. She has had several tragedies in her life, but she doesn’t believe any of them are accidents. She believes another novelist, Kloster, is the one responsible, and she needs the narrator’s help to prove it. But is Luciana even sane? She has spent time in a mental hospital, after all…I really enjoyed this book and Martinez’ writing. I’ll definitely be looking forward to The Oxford Murders in 2009.2008, 224 pp.(4/5)

[perfectleft_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

an interesting read. short, nothing too exciting.