Don't Step into My Office

by David Fishkind

A gripping debut novel of literary suspense and a vivid portrait of wealth's hidden violence.

Aspiring writer and general layabout Jacob Garlicker doesn't expect—walking along the beach on the night of his twenty-sixth birthday—to witness a murder. After a hapless attempt to help the victim, Jacob decides to forget the incident entirely. And for a while, he does, returning to his bohemian life in NYC as if nothing of consequence had occurred.

Seven years later, Jacob is blissfully married. Now mostly sober, and mostly at peace with his failed writing career, he's feeling alright as he heads to his father-in-law's birthday celebration in the Hamptons, even as he knows the well-heeled WASPs that populate his in-laws' social circle will spend the weekend treating him with polite disdain. Everything shifts, however, when Jacob arrives on Long Island and begins to realize that those well-heeled WASPs are not as harmless as they seem.

Over the course of this propulsive, at times blackly comic narrative, Jacob wavers between addled narcissism and earnest commitment as he searches for the brutal, booze-soaked truth. Indebted to the suspenseful, page-turning plotwork of Patricia Highsmith and the operatic madness of Dario Argento, Don't Step into My Office is a mesmerizing literary puzzle.

Genres: Fiction

360 pages, Hardcover

First published January 13, 2026

Reviews

[ari · Rating 3 out of 5]

The prose was thick & it felt like I had to wade through the words to get to the actual meaning. But I enjoyed this.

[Remi · Rating 2 out of 5]

this one hooked me at first with its lightly sardonic, self-aware narrator telling a mystery. it felt promising. And to be fair, David Fishkind can write. when the book slows down and lets the prose breathe, there’s a calm, almost meditative beauty to it. parts of the early chapters even reminded me of David Szalay’s Flesh in the way they linger on mood and interiority.

but once the dialogue ramps up, the experience changed for me. conversations stretch on and on, dense to the point of feeling stuck. the pacing becomes so slow that i genuinely struggled to push through. i can see the intention, combining a literary-fiction sensibility with a crime/mystery setup. however, the blend didn’t work for my reading rhythm. i kept wishing the plot would move, or that the tension would tighten rather than meander.

it’s a bold idea, and the writing itself shows real talent, especially for a debut, but the structure and pacing just weren’t for me. readers who enjoy character-driven literary mysteries with long conversational detours might click with it far more than i did.

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to-read:

using a humorous tone to tell a mystery literary fiction is always golden

*thank you to Arcade for the ARC*

[Gina O.C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first encounter with David Fishkind’s writing came from an anthology about suicide. His entry “Rapture at the Parkview Diner” caught my interest immediately with its raw, bleak, and at times gross honesty.

When I learned he would finally be publishing his first novel, I immediately added a signed copy to my cart and set my expectations high. I can truly say “Don’t Step Into My Office” has exceeded them. Jacob Garlicker feels a lot of the things I feel, and thinks a lot of the things I think, and somewhere in this equation Fishkind fleshes out a character who is simultaneously relatable, off-putting, and for me, as a person with one year clean and sober, cautionary.

I found myself straining to not read the next paragraph before finishing the previous out of pure hunger for what happens next. I hope this is the first of many novels I get to read from this unique and talented writer.

[Ryan Diederich · Rating 4 out of 5]

Combination of parodic downtown auto-fiction and Under the Silver Lake-core paranoia stumblebum detectivities. Strongest as a relapse comedy, weakest in its plotting and pacing as the mystery comes together. Of course its long winded stretch and its sardonic humor give the book its personality, so it’s not so much a discredit as it’s a comment on structure. For example, it discards its phenomenal first chapter that establishes the mystery by stuttering ahead several years. Sure, it all ties together, but the book never really considers the honest pleasures of a mystery, instead using them as a grindstone to burr out the mundanity of its memoirities.

Looking forward to any and all future works by the author.

[Eileen Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did not want to put this mystery type book down. From the very start, I was rooting for Jacob Garlicker to get his life together. The beginning of the book grabs you in with an event and the journey to figure out what happened is the masterful part of this unique book. The reader follows Jacob as he tries to find solutions to some of the many situations that arise. Read carefully as there are clues and such situations blend into each other. Well done David Fishkind. I highly recommend this book. Your first novel will be the first of many and I look forward to seeing this as a mini-series or movie.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Congrats to David Fishkind for pulling this off. I can't believe all this stuff really happened to you.

I was initially annoyed with our slacker protagonist Jacob Garlicker, but I soon realized it's because he exists as a dark, alternate universe version of me where I drink alcohol and smoke weed.

This is a fun book about Gatsby being Jewish, true love, mystery, paranoia, and the dangers of booze.

Stayed in on New Year's Eve to finish it. Showered, got in bed by 9, and by 10:30 the holocaust was complete.

[Nora Obeid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jacob Garlicker's life was a sublime train wreck. I haven't read anything quite like Don't Step Into My Office before, by turns literary, suspenseful, comic, repulsive, surreal and hyperreal. Garlicker's bumbling, narcissistic stoner-dilettantery challenges the reader's ability to empathize, while the tight plotwork refuses to let you look away. Fishkind tells a complicated and compelling story that comes together miraculously with a satisfying, metafictional wink.

[Izzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A riveting modern mystery novel with genuine humor and self awareness, told from the POV of the hapless narrator and main character. I've never read anything like this before, and I tore right through it. Two thumbs way up

[JXR · Rating 5 out of 5]

intense and impressive thriller with some great characters and a very literary-y, lyrical flow to it. 5 stars. tysm for the arc.

[Zoe Dubno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can't help but love that Garlicker.