*** NEW ***

"Stephen Clark

Editor

Mooted Publications

In this mystery, the chief suspect becomes the detective as she tries to prove her innocence and track down the real murderer in a race against time. To attempt to solve this mystery she must use her excellent mathematical ability.

Yvonne Eve Walus has taken the unusual approach of giving readers the prime suspect in the first couple of pages. Even before you have finished the first chapter, you can feel completely confident that Christine killed her boss. The story focuses mainly on Christine’s life and thoughts, so you get a real feeling for how badly she hates her boss, but did she kill him?.

You also gain brief glimpses into the thoughts and psyche of the other main characters and by doing so the author is able to introduce motives that Christine herself is not aware of. These add not only to the believability of the characters themselves but to the many twists that this mystery takes. If it wasn’t Christine, there are many other suspects.

Murder @ Work is a very hard book to put down, and is a great weekend read. The chapters are short and you quickly make progress. The characters are engaging, and well constructed, the plot is more complex than it first seems, and it will have you guessing until the last page. There are good insights into the new South Africa and the old one plus the people who have failed to make the transition between the two. Some good humour and Walus’s unusual style makes for an entertaining, fascinating and riveting mystery.

Alan Curtis

http://www.who-dunnit.com/

In Murder at Work, Yvonne Eve Walus' sense of humor isn't, perhaps, as apparent as it is in some of her other writing, but that doesn't keep this mystery story from being any less interesting, amusing, or fun. Using her own natural flair for mathematics, Ms. Walus has given us a female protagonist who not only becomes the prime suspect but must race against time to prove her own innocence. In itself, not a new situation in murder mysteries, but it's the way Ms. Walus handles it that makes Murder at Work intriguing and hard to lay aside....

read the complete review here 

by Pam Slade

RWNZ

Set against the heat and mixed ethic background of South Africa, this is a murder with a difference.

Christine Chamberlain finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation, soon after an argument with him. A series of e-mails have recently been passed on by the office workers. They all know it’s a joke, when there are suggestions on ways and means to kill James. Rita finds the body and Captain Pieter van der Walt arrives to investigate, he has other ideas. In the heat of South Africa close to Christmas this small team of people, all with different agendas are all under suspicion. The charge is murder by fennel oil.

Christine admits she didn’t like the boss, and yes her fennel oil is missing. There was also her annual leave, and a visit to the Greek islands James was trying to sabotage.

James wasn’t popular with Dorothea the receptionist and secretary, because he was racist.

Rita resented him, because he’d married her sister. They’d been madly in love, until an accident had meant she was bound to a wheelchair.

Ian was angry, because unknown to the others he’d been warned about sloppy work.

Quiet Yashilla, seemed to love everyone.

Or could it be the oddball Henry, who has plans to run his own business.

Perhaps the wily femme fatale Estelle had met her match, because she’s not what she seems.

The Captain of the police is a man with his own agenda and an eye on the pathologist assigned to the case.

As the police sift through the evidence, they uncover far more secrets than they’d envisaged.

This is a good murder mystery, written with tongue in cheek humour. The plot twists and turns as the office diverse bunch of characters that make up the staff, begin to learn more about each other. Their quirks are used by the author to great effect. This reviewer found the story fascinating and with a refreshing and unusual style, with some great humour.

Reviewed by: Michelle

Fallen Angels Reviews

Dr. Christine Chamberlain hates her boss, James; I mean she REALLY hates her boss. She has dreams and ideas about how she could kill him almost constantly. When he pulls her off a project that she knows and loves and sends her out on another job that she knows nothing about, she begins to wish him dead in earnest. Her co-workers share her opinions, and decide to murder the boss. Of course it is all in fun; everyone is just blowing off some steam and talking nonsense, right?

Then James turns up dead and the office rumor mill begins to grind, pointing fingers at Christine as the main suspect. Her dream trip to Greece is threatened. It seems that everyone in the office has a motive for killing James; which one went beyond the line of decency into murder?

Yvonne Eve Walus spins an intriguing tale of whodunit in Murder at Work. The gossip and the backbiting in this story are pretty typical fare for those working in an office setting, adding realism to the piece. Christine is a woman frustrated beyond her limits with her job situation and the plot thickens as each worker’s secrets are revealed. Murder at Work is a nail-biter of a story that keeps you guessing until the last page.