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Don't Step into My Office
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.
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.
360 pages, Hardcover
First published January 13, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
January 18, 2026
The prose was thick & it felt like I had to wade through the words to get to the actual meaning. But I enjoyed this.
November 30, 2025
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*
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.
-------
to-read:
using a humorous tone to tell a mystery literary fiction is always golden
*thank you to Arcade for the ARC*
March 7, 2026
Not for me!
January 26, 2026
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.
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.
January 18, 2026
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.
Looking forward to any and all future works by the author.
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April 3, 2026Great writing and a truly fearsome vocabulary. I liked the ending, but the rest of it…? Struggle to have nice things to say…how kafkaesque the Hamptons can be? How much in control rich people are of the world? It IS kind of impressive how every single thing and person was somehow involved in the central mystery of the book…in that way it AMOUNTED to something that a lot of newer fiction which are just amalgamations of observations doesn’t…but maybe it was all a little too orchestrated? And the very dramatic reveal was too knives out…with the villain explaining every single detail. Also a lot of…unnecessary caricaturing of women into types and ageism which might be the character, but reads as the author…
January 16, 2026
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.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
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.
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.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
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.
May 9, 2026
really fun!!! great debut, in the beginning i did feel like fishkind was trying a little too hard with the prose but once i settled in i notice a lot less of that. really well written, really fun. devoured this, great drug and alcohol addled little mystery reminding me a cross between emma cline and thomas pynchon, highly recommend!
January 21, 2026
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
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February 7, 2026“All my cells had regenerated. Ostensibly, there were things on which I might reflect. How, though, could I hope to communicate the horrors since incurred? Fiction demanded authenticity. Even to myself I was unreal. When had the world become the terror world?”
March 14, 2026
the middle of his odyssey finding out everything was quite gripping but the end felt rushed and a bit cringe ngl plus all the namedropping of extravagant brands to show how rich they are i dunno felt a bit lazy
yes it’s a page turner but not great literary efforts, still a fun read i guess
yes it’s a page turner but not great literary efforts, still a fun read i guess
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
intense and impressive thriller with some great characters and a very literary-y, lyrical flow to it. 5 stars. tysm for the arc.
January 22, 2026
Can't help but love that Garlicker.
March 29, 2026
“As a child, I’d fantasized about getting lost in a house. The allure of equivocal doors. Underground passageways. False walls and hidden tunnels. Stuff like this didn’t exist. My fixations did though. The world was not designed for mystery. Yet mystery designed the world.”
An interesting debut that I couldn’t ever quite pin down. Both an examination of the fading upper class (and the various striations within) and a murder “mystery” and a story of recovery and relapse and also and also. While the language was interesting and the writing very solid, I just hated the narrator. That usually doesn’t bother me, Iove a sucky narrator, but this guy just seemed so self-defeating and… annoying?
An interesting debut that I couldn’t ever quite pin down. Both an examination of the fading upper class (and the various striations within) and a murder “mystery” and a story of recovery and relapse and also and also. While the language was interesting and the writing very solid, I just hated the narrator. That usually doesn’t bother me, Iove a sucky narrator, but this guy just seemed so self-defeating and… annoying?
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews