Cuando Lem acepta el puesto de vendedor de enciclopedias para poder costearse sus estudios, poco sospecha que será testigo presencial de un crimen, y que el criminal lo implicará directamente a él. A partir de ahí, Lem tendrá que desentrañar una compleja trama de corrupción y tráfico de animales que lo obligará a conocer al peculiar asesino, una especie de Robin Hood inteligente y socarrón que libra su propia cruzada en un mundo hostil y corrompido.

Lem Altick, a seventeen year old door to door encyclopedia salesman, is an unlikely protagonist in a novel filled with drug deals and murder. He is in the wrong place at the wrong time when he witnesses the murder of two customers in a mobile home. Concerned that he’ll be the next target, he strikes a tentative friendship with the killer, Melford Kean. Kean is also an unlikely killer, an animal rights activist who is a pretty likable person. Also involved in this conspiracy is a corrupt redneck co, and the company that Lem works for, which does a lot more than just peddle encyclopedias.

The major problem with this novel is that there is nothing remotely believable about the novel. The characters are quirky and interesting. The conspiracies are a bit much, and the plot is too far out there to have any credibility. Basically, this novel is more style than substance. Although it was somewhat enjoyable from a stylistic point of view, it was not particularly good.

Carl Alves – author of Blood Street ( )

I have to go with Tom's rating system - this book does not deserve a star, hardly even half a moon. You might ask why I continued to listen to it - to the bitter end. I think I made the commitment of several hours and I did not have another book on my MP3, so I kept thinking it would get better; after all the word "ethical" is in the title. How bad could it be? Very bad!

Not a book that I liked. It's a boom starting in a way and ending in another, with a subject not clear at least for 150 pages.
There are too few characters designed, twoo few people involved in the history and the story is well known 70 pages before the end. The language is too "journalist like", there are too many dialogues. As I said, I didn't like it. ( )

Lem Altick needs to make $30,000 so he can go to Columbia University and escape from 1980s small town Florida forever. He gets a job selling encyclopedias door-to-door, and turns out to be pretty good at it. And then just as he's closing a sale to a strange couple living in a trailer, the ethical assassin bursts in and, yes, assassinates them. Lem is now on a tortuous quest to not get arrested, not get killed and get out of town. But first he has to make his way through more murders, crooked cops, rednecks, drug dealers, hog farms, a love interest, and animal rights activists.

Some reviewers didn't like this book because they found it had a preachy animal rights agenda, and I agree that that was heavy-handed. However, it's really only in two sections, and they are quite close to the end of the story. This book isn't perfect or without faults. Overall, however, I thought it was a lot of fun, and for the most part, well written. I will definitely look for more books by David Liss in the future.

Recommended for: readers who want to be entertained. One word of caution--there is a slew of extremely slimy and disreputable characters in this story, and as slimy and disreputable people are known to do--they swear and say some shockingly horrible things. This is completely realistic, but I realize that some people just don't want to have those words and images in their heads--no matter how true to life they are. Definitely rated R for bad language. ( )