"Killer's Bible" by Calvin Loch is a gritty and intense crime thriller that plunges you into the mind of a criminal, exploring the dark depths of obsession and violence.

Interesting plot and concept. This book pulls you in from the start and keeps you wanting more. The voice of Calvin makes the reader identify with his complex emotional state.

This wasn’t as interesting as I was hoping for. It seemed a little braggy which didn’t help the character come off as real

I felt this book did not live up to the description. Who did he kill? Lots of unanswered questions. Thanks to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for the arc of this book in return for my review. Receiving the book in this manner had no bearing on this review.

Thank you to Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Well, a little creepy and scary certainly not for the sqeumish or the faint-hearted. Very raw and explicit.. Not my usual read, but I am pleased I read it.

WOW, what a read! The plot was intense, powerful and thrilling and held me captive all the way through! The characters fairly leaped off the page, and the tension was palpable. If you are looking for a book that you just CAN’T put down, then this is DEFINITELY the book for you!

I thought the premise of this book was great, but the story itself fell a tadbit flat. This is definitely one of the slowest burning thrillers I’ve read and not being fond of this subcategory of thrillers, it made this one drag on for me and I wish it had more action to really draw me in.

Killer's Bible by Calvin Loch had a very interesting premise which is why I requested it and it definitely delivered for me. Highly recommended.

This was incredibly difficult to read. The writing was really choppy and it just made it difficult to get through.

Boring book with an uninteresting story and,frankly,a character difficult to like,a narrative that is neither interesting nor developed to its potential and lengthy explanations a propos of nothing.
2 Stars

Thank you Netgalley and BooksGoSocial for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was curious when I saw this book and wanted to see how this book will be presented. When I read the synopsis I was intrigued and thought this will give some insight into the killer's mind and maybe make us question our own moral standards. I received an email from the author (maybe the publisher) and in it, he talks about an incident that makes it seem like, a comparison is drawn from that event to the crimes committed by the author. So I am thinking this book will be about a killer who did crimes to take out the worst of humanity or something. Somebody taking justice into their own hands to get rid of guilty people (however wrong it is). The book as far as I have read does not give that impression so I guess it's unfair for me to judge it based on what I have read so far. I am disappointed and annoyed. I couldn't get through the rambling of the author. It was not coherent or the thought process was just all over the place. I couldn't follow the conversation between him and his secretary. It did not flow as a normal conversation would, it felt sloppy and incoherent. The author's thought process was disorganized and made it difficult to follow through. I did not understand what the reason was for him being the killer or his motives behind it. The narrator's behavior is of a narcissist, chauvinist, and a misogynist. His behavior towards his law clerk is harassment and the way he talks about it makes it obvious he is reveling in his behavior and proud of it. I couldn't read through the book and found it difficult to continue with the author's disorganized thought process. I DNF-ed the book and won't be picking it up.

The events in the book were altered and the names and places are also changed. Some of the things alluded to in the book makes the readers doubt the sanity and the state-of-mind of the author. It is impossible to tell how much is fiction and how much is true. I am thinking about what I have read the author seems to be disturbed and has serious psychological issues. If it was just the author's behavior that is unlikable, then I would have still read the book. It was, however, the unorganized way the story is moving forward, the inner monologue and the unnatural way the dialogues appear that makes it difficult for me to follow through.

I will not be rating the book and I think it will be unfair for me to rate it without completing the book. That's all I have to say about Killer's Bible which is marketed as a memoir of a killer who got away.

I only got to 5% progress before I put this book down. It was very choppy, difficult to read and difficult to follow. DID NOT FINISH! Sorry!

I requested this from NetGalley thinking that it had an interesting premise and if carried out well it could be darkly thrilling and deeply unsettling. After all, it purports to be the ‘real’ confession of a killer and a how to kill handbook for normal people. Let me tell this straight, this is not well done, it is certainly no handbook and the lead character is less someone ‘pushed to the edge’ or who murders with ‘good reason’, but rather a puerile, chauvinistic psychopath who needs to grow up more than anything else. As an aside, I have actually spoken with a murderer - convicted and served his time - who killed his wife’s new husband for molesting his six year old daughter, and there’s a justification if I ever saw one. The talk he gave and the brief conversation I had with him after have stuck with me for the better part of fifteen years. His final words to us still resonate in my memory. This drivel certainly won’t.

Let me expand on my reasons somewhat. Firstly, the writing style is all over the place. It is clearly meant to be the inner stream of consciousness of a deeply disturbed individual. It’s disjointed, meandering and focuses in on unimportant events or the characters crude and unimaginative attempts to get into the pants of his secretary. It doesn’t help that the character isn’t disturbed as much as he is just a ginormous dick. I don’t believe this is the work of a murderer in case that isn’t clear. I don’t believe the character depicted here is smart enough to get away with murder. He’s a loose canon with low impulse control and an ego the size of Manhattan. That’s the kind of thing that gets you caught. This is an author trying - and failing - to be edgy by publishing a weak fanfiction of American Psycho, possibly starring himself as the lead of the show.

On with the being a giant dick thing. If the ‘pseudo-biography pretence’ didn’t give it away you can tell a male wrote this from the way his female characters are written. I nearly threw in the towel when he has one of his female professionals excuse forgetting to file essential paperwork to the court because she was hormonal and then whine to her boss that ‘she was bleeding and he didn’t care.’ I hate to break this to any aspiring male writers among you, but menstruation isn’t that big of a deal. By the time we hit the big old work place, us females have learned the whole manage tampons thing without crying about it. Hell, most of us learn before we leave high school. There’s a test somewhere that says if you can replace the female characters in a work of fiction with a decorated lampshade then the author is a freaking hack. Providing you can stomach said lampshade being all but dry humped in spirit if not in body then this falls straight into that particular trap.

On top of this you have multiple inconsistencies and poor research. I can’t comment on the law firm aspects although I would hazard a guess that the behaviour demonstrated would have resulted in dismissal several times over at any reputable firm - and this is meant to be one. I also seriously doubt the behind scenes dealings to make a potential GBH charge disappear, but again not my area of expertise. There are however multiple references to self harm here, and I don’t think the author has ever experienced this or even researched it well and it shows in the writing. Calvin apparently has a leg belt of broken glass that he has strapped to his thigh at all times and uses whenever he feels the urge to hurt someone coming on. Except it’s apparently always in the same spot; anyone who has self harmed even fleetingly knows that this just isn’t reasonable. To keep hurting the same area again and again and again, before the previous wounds would have had time to heal? And with unsterilised equipment to boot? That’s a one way ticket to infection central and that’s a first class trip to enforced hospitalisation. Don’t pass Go. Don’t collect £200.

Going back to the writing however for my final points, there are three possible murders mentioned here. One at the very beginning, one glossed over from the characters childhood and one right at the end. Despite the blurb, none of these are described properly, let alone justified and if someone was reading this with the intent to look into a killers mind, they’d be disappointed. Even more so if they are expecting a ‘how-to-kill handbook’. What you get instead is narcissistic and self-indulgent waffling mixed with an unhealthy dose of sexual harassment and possible mental illness. You get a lot about his daddy issues, more about his juvenile fascination with his penis and next to nothing about the murders. The closest you get to advice is that it’s a good idea to leave forensic traces of your urine all over the damn crime scene. But if you ditch the car, you’ll be fine right?

So. Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for my review copy of this, but I can find nothing at all to mitigate this. It’s not dark and edgy. It’s pathetic and puerile. The marketing is perhaps the best thing about this. It’s just a pity that the finished article doesn’t resemble it at all.

The writing is fast, noir, cool and raw, very Jean Claude Izzo. As I say is't dark and not for everyone but for me it was a delight.

Well, where to start? I think this was one of the most confusing books I’ve ever read… is it read or is it fiction?

I was really captured by the description but for me, it fell a bit short. It started off strongly and drew me in well, but then I had many moments where I didn’t think I could continue to read, I went back and read the synopsis again and persevered. I did feel like I needed to do it justice and read to the end as it sounded so good, but I just didn’t feel like I ‘got it’.

‘Calvin Loch’ is a very odd man with not much to draw you in to him. The book is written a bit like a slew of words which didn’t always make sense. Calvin lusts after his law clerk and feels he has one over on her when he realises the time has lapsed for her to press charges for harassment, this seems to spur him on to continue his tirade, again though this doesn’t really develop how I would have expected, I thought it would go darker but was more of a passing comment to show he has previously pushed too far.

Has Calvin actually killed or not? some points sound lie he is a serial killer hidden in plain sight, others like he’s just made his first kill… maybe he killed his brother, but it all seems a bit far-fetched and unbelievable.

What seems most likely though is that ‘Calvin’ is a very disturbed man who has some serious psychological issues.

Overall, I didn’t really enjoy this read, I wanted to get to the end but felt the synopsis was much better than the book.

Killer's Bible starts off strong. I honestly would have given this a three, but the quality of writing declined. Although insisting this takes place in the US, the author slips into British terms often enough that it made me question if the author was entirely sure where they were. The story is hard to follow at times, although the storyline and premise are interesting. Overall, did not fully deliver on the promise of the synopsis.

I really wanted to like this book. The description drew me in. Unfortunately, it fell short for me. I struggled to complete the book even starting another book while reading this one just to give me some entertainment. There was so much potential in the story, but it did not deliver. As I did like the idea of the main character and reading about his inner most thoughts, many times I felt like he was rambling (which maybe was the goal?) and giving too much detail to insignificant points.

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book.

By the end of the book I felt I had just ploughed through rather than enjoyed it. I will say it was very different from other murder stories I have read but that didn’t mean it entertained me because it didn’t. One thing I noticed and was irritated by was the overuse of exclamation marks but I though that was just me being grammar obsessed but funnily enough I’ve just read another review where this point was made too. However when I properly read all my correspondence regarding this issue I see the published book will have no exclamation marks so I apologise if this seemed a criticism when it actually was my mistake.
My score is based on my level of enjoyment which is obviously subjective. I found the book too dark and I did not enjoy this peek into the author’s mind.

This was painful to read, I didn't like the guy, how he spoke or what he did. It horrifying to believe there are people out there and its equally horrifying how well they hide in plain sight. My own experience with attorneys doesn't do much to make me think this is fiction-

If it's true, it's horrible. If its a novel, I worry about the imagination of the author, glad he doesn't live nearby.
Aside from the awfulness of the story, the writing is a bit erratic. There is no narrative flow.

Sorry, this was just not for me.

Publisher’s description: How-to Kill Handbook for normal people

"Did I really do all of it? Yes, I did. All of it. But there’s no telling. Not straight up. I’d get thirty-to-life."

The real-life diary of ‘Calvin Loch’, a New York lawyer who takes the law into his own hands and murders a man with good reason.

This true-crime memoir catalogues the events that push an attorney to the edge. From office politics to shady dealings, from being love-struck to killing ‘justly’, this first-hand account is a chilling exposé of how a white-collar murderer gets away with it.

The verdict: crimes don’t warrant punishment if done by a balanced ‘bad man’ who believes that he’s doing good.

The author remains at large.

**********
Ugh!

I have read true crime in the past and been completely pulled in by books about Charles Manson and the Zodiac killer. That’s what made me request this title. This book is like neither of those. This book isn’t even what the publisher describes.

“Killer’s Bible” by Calvin Loch (a supposed pseudonym) is stream-of-consciousness mental vomit told in the first person by a sociopath and misogynist who apparently is a lawyer who feels the need to take the law into his own hands. The vigilante murder that he supposedly committed takes place at the very end of the book, and the chapters leading up to it give absolutely no information to back up Calvin’s claims that his victim is a horrible person who needed to be brought to justice.

Chapter after chapter, we see Calvin lusting after his law clerk, digging glass into his leg to keep “The Surge” in check, rambling about his urges. And apparently he changed enough of the details to protect himself (and his clients) from discovery, so really how much of this is real and how much is fiction? My take is that this is a work of fiction that the author thinks is edgy and believes has a better chance of being published if presented as a memoir.

I recently received an email from “Calvin,” which is really sent by his publishers according to the small print.

“Thanks for accessing a free copy of Killer’s Bible on Netgalley in exchange for an honest review when the book launches on 1 March.

“Statistics to date:
189 people downloaded Killer’s Bible.
Only 6 people are male.
What does this mean?

“From the reviews so far, some female readers dislike my message. Such a contrast from publishing on the dark net. Nevertheless your views are valid and genuinely appreciated despite that a trick has been missed. I never cried over what I have done and remain unrepentant but I cried over the hurtful reviews. I have killed but I am human. America has the death sentence and, as a participant in society, you agree with killing.

“Today, a funny thing! A friend lost $40,000 to a building contractor who ran away with his money a year ago. He and his wife are bankrupt and lost their honeymoon. His wife now suffers depression. My friend went to a lawyer who also wanted to screw him. One night a man knocked on his door. A big man. Ex-military. He says: ‘I heard what happened. Let’s go’. The ex-military man tracked down the building contractor. My friend watched the ex-military warn the contractor that he would be maimed if he didn’t pay back my friend. Today my friend got $30,000. My friend is a man of peace but now understands there’s goodness in ‘bad people’. I feel exonerated.

“Can I request that morality be put aside in judging Killer’s Bible and that virtue doesn’t creep in under different guises, per the Warning in the book?

“Feel damned, so publish! Fine for me, but there’s a team of people behind the publication of Killer’s Bible who need it to succeed. You are part of the literati. It’s for the authorities, not book reviewers, to bring me to justice.”

Clearly, I agree with most of the other women he indicates didn’t like the book. However, it has nothing to do with morality. I just think it’s poorly written drivel that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone. If the team of people behind this publication NEED it to succeed, they should start looking for another title because this isn’t going to launch their careers.

Run away from this one...far far away. I would rate it 0 stars if I could.

Thanks to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for a free advance copy in exchange for an honest review. This title will be available on March 1, 2020.