You Don't Have to be Evil to Work Here, But it Helps

By Tom Holt

Book Overview

Colin Hollinghead is a young man going nowhere fast. Working for his dad might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but starting at the bottom in the widget-making industry has, predictably, lost its appeal. And now the business is in trouble. At least his father has a plan to turn things arounda new work force that will improve profit margins and secure the company s future for all eternity. The deal looks great on paper, but they do say that the devil is in the detailsand the arch fiend definitely seems to be involved in some capacity. Colin needs help, and perhaps his new friend from J.W. Wells & Co. can help. Sparkling with wit and oozing charm, Tom Holt s comic caper proves once and for all that going to work can actually be hell."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1841492833
• ISBN13: 9781841492834
• Release Date: February 2006
• Publisher: Orbit Book Co.
• Length: 346 Pages
• Weight: 2.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.7" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

I was beginning to despair

I comb bookstores, wherever I go looking for a line on new to me authors. No one has ever mentioned Tom Holt and I pretty much tripped over him because of some snarky comment by a reader of his who said something unforgivable about Terry Pratchett. Tom is the real deal. I enjoyed reading this book about as much as I have enjoyed reading Jasper FForde's Thursday Next and Nursery Crimes series and certainly, it compares well to Terry Pratchet's work. I would go so far as to say, if you like Christopher Moore's Stupidest Angel, you'll enjoy this one too. I will be reading more of his books in the future, that's a lead pipe cinche. (it occurs to me, I haven't the least idea how to spell cinch...)

Evil can be fun

Again Tom Holt has combined the unlikely, the impossible, and the routine in a unique way. Great fun again!

Very good

This is a good one. A semi-serious caveat: Tom Holt always seems to be writing madly toward deadline,so that he only has time to sketch in the end of his books. So, his ends are often well-worked out, but the characterization and humor of the first 4/5ths of the book fade away. That's the case with this one. Great twists, great premise, good characters, excellent description, some very funny jokes. But the complicated plot deserves a more fully-realized conclusion, not people explaining things to each other for twenty pages. A few more "seeds" could have planted earlier to suggest the completely out of nowhere meaning of the tree (this isn't a spoiler, we meet the tree at the end of chapter 1). The story wraps up really well, but it's practically a set piece. But it's still worth reading. (See, I gave it four stars!) Tom Holt is really talented and he's not the only obscenely prolific author to blast through the final pages of his novels to meet some deadline or other.