A Death at the Office, by Frank J. Edler

A Death at the Office by Frank J. Edler

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


This was a singularly weak book. In short, there’s not just death but Death personified (so far not too unusual) – and there’s a whole corporation of them. All called Death which leads to oh-so-funny encounters with the “Help Death” towards whom another Death insists on calling “Help Desk” and so on…

Trying way too hard to be funny but having no discernible talent for writing (and humour) seems to be the primary issue here.

Two examples so you can decide for yourself:

»Tattered Black Telephone™ and a Tattered Black Notepad™. On the Tattered Black Notepad™, Death found an old Tattered Black Message™ scrawled a millennia ago, on the last shift change.
The Tattered Black Message™ read:«

The continued use of “TM” does not excuse the repetitiveness of the whole “Tattered Black something” stuff. It is just annoying and pretty much everything is tattered black…

»move? To Acapulco?”
“Acapulco? What? No. They say he’s got his staff setting up Mr. Death for the fall.”
“Lovely weather in the fall. Good idea. Well, I’ve got to be going now,” Schlub said, becoming uneasy with the conversation.«

This knee-slapping kind of humour belongs to nine-year olds.

As often the case with authors of questionable talent, the humour almost universally resorts to the faecal sort:

»If King Minos was bored, he wiped his shit on the walls. If King Minos was hungry, he wiped his shit on the walls. If King Minos didn’t get what he wanted, he wiped his shit on the walls. If King Minos woke up in the morning, he wiped his shit on the walls.«

Edler obviously smeared his faeces all over a poor innocent text editor…

Also, typos and grammatical issues on a meagre 34 pages are highly annoying.

Last but not least, some sentences remain ominous…

»So, the Founder & CEO Eternal of The League of Deaths created Limbo, a place where Death went if it couldn’t Death.«

Sorry, what?

Even for the 50 cent I paid for this, it’s a complete, utter, irredeemable disgrace.

One star out of five because I cannot award none.


Ceterum censeo Putin esse delendam




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