Name: Who Killed Christopher Goodman?
ISBN: 9780763656133

Allan Wolf

Despite his odd manner and crazy bell bottoms, everybody likes Chris Goodman, so when he's found dead no one can understand how something like that could happen.

Who Killed Christopher Goodman?

Amanda Kordeliski

I started this one as an audio--which is an excellent listen--and finished with the ebook. I found the printed book a clunky read and all the character jumping kept me from truly being absorbed in the story. The audio is full cast and does an excellent job of giving all of the characters a unique voice.

Laura

This is one of those books I'll probably forget about completely about before very long. It was an impulse pick up at the library, mostly due to that little note at the bottom "based on a true crime". That's one of my biggest buzzphrases. I freaking love true crime nonfiction (and fiction based off true crime too). I mean, I suppose this is a mystery novel- and it's advertised as such- but it seemed more like a contemporary than a straight-up mystery novel, since it's fairly obvious whodunit.

I suppose the mystery part of it is more how the night unfolded as opposed to who actually killed him. The problem is, though, it's such a quick read (though it took me like 3 days because I just had no real motivation to actually read anything) that there's no time for suspense, a key aspect in any good mystery novel. I do suppose that is preferable to too much suspense, something that's one of my biggest bitch points in mystery novels. It's hard for beginning mystery authors to find sweet spot between too much and too little, and most lean towards too much, bogging down the book. Wolf, on the other hand, went for too little, proving that also isn't that great either. I'm not saying that this book should have been dragged out to over 400 pages, but it would have helped the novel feel more like a mystery.

Another issue I had was the characters. There's some glimmers of interesting characters, and traits I haven't seen before, but overall I just didn't get enough of them. It's sad, too, because they sound like really cool characters that I would like. A genius with Tourette's Syndrome, done tastefully. A football-playing good ol' boy shown in a positive light. A petite and pretty stamp-collector. These are the types of characters I want to see more in novels, and the small traces we got of their home and family lives didn't seem like it was enough. Even Christopher Goodman (really, Goodman, you actually went with that) seemed like a pretty cool, Ferris Bueller-kinda guy but there wasn't enough to make me actually care about him. And the whole yawn-wee thing was straight up stupid. As was Operation Petting-Zoo Poo. Both of them made me roll my eyes.

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Who Killed Christopher Goodman?

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