received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book or my review itself.

I'm not one for extreme blood and gore.

This may seem like a strange statement coming from a bookworm who loves mysteries and true crimes. But my favorite mysteries are ones that take place in small villages and snowed-in mansions, and there are certain true crimes I cannot read about.

So I really liked how cleverly Wangersky played with the idea of violence in Walt. The violence is completely implicit, but no less terrifying for that. In fact, the book is made far eerier by what the readers don't see. We are forced to trust what Walt tells us, and Walt could very well be a stalker and serial killer.

Walt works in a grocery store, cleaning up the messes left by people who never even notice he's there. He picks up their discarded grocery lists, envisioning their lives based off what they set out to buy. He follows them home, finding their information from the junk mail they obliviously scrawl their lists on.

And maybe he kills them too.

The police certainly suspect him of killing his missing wife. And then there's the woman whose diary entries readers are made privy to...

This is a quick, creative read--and one that definitely shouldn't be read on a bus late at night, or before bed--it will have you looking over your shoulder and questioning every shadow. ( )

Mired in lovely prose, it couldn't pull its feet out and get moving. Two stars for the story but four stars for his way with words, and meet you in the middle. ( )

Walt is a janitor at a supermarket. Largely unnoticed, ignored -- and he likes that. He is obsessive about collecting discarded grocery lists, and about the women who discard them.

Walt's wife is missing and the police are pretty sure Walt is responsible for her disappearance, and for other crimes in the neighbourhood. But he is?

Walt is the narrator of this book, and as we listen to what he says -- and doesn't say -- we are drawn into a psychological thriller. Well written, it's a character-based page-turner. ( )

Russell Wangersky grabs readers by the scruff and yanks them into Walt's character, somehow transforming the character-soaked novel into a page-turner.

"I swear I’m not going to become one of those people who goes around talking to myself, dazzling my own constantly appreciative audience of one. I may do strange things, but I do them deliberately."

The details really do matter to Walt; he is very attentive to detail and a skilled observer. But, ironically, readers learn as much about Walt from his acts of observation as we learn about his subjects.

"Her name is Elizabeth, and she has a particular way of talking to you, every word distinct and placed down sharply with a click like Scrabble tiles, her hair piled up grey and precise, and she always looks at your chest, high up toward your shoulder and slightly off to one side, the left side, as if she’d been told that this was exactly the spot where your heart was, and if she looked at it hard enough, she’d be able to divine your true intentions right through the wall of your chest, right inside that lub-dubbing lump of muscle in there. Eyes staring straight through flesh and bone and muscle. Or something like that."

For instance, the description of Elizabeth is revealing, but primarily for what his degree of attentiveness -- and the details he values enough to share -- relays to us.

But it is not always about the details we can see which matter, but the details which might go unseen. Walt's awareness includes his observations of his own behaviour, but that doesn't mean that question readers might have will be answered.

"There’s a spot, right near one end, where someone smacked a beer bottle down hard enough on the wood to leave a little half-circle of dents. That probably would have been me."

The violence simmers beneath the surface of the narrative (more often than not). Often times, readers are left to intuit the significance of marks are left behind on various surfaces. In this matter, perspective is key.

"There’s a little shift that happens, and it happens all the time, in all kinds of circumstances. Like your eyes suddenly are working a different way, and you size everything up differently."

How Walt sizes things up is directly related to how readers will size them up. "It’s smart to be as honest as you can — the best lies are packed full of truth." Walt is packed full of truth.

Readers might use one of Walt's observations to describe the pacing of the novel: "Momentum is powerful and cruel, and there’s not one single thing that can change it." There is a sense of inevitability to the story as readers turn the pages.

There is some grimacing, some lip-curling: these are not comfortable places to inhabit. But once readers have begun to "watch" with Walt, it is hard to look away.

"You get addicted to the things you do really well. That’s just the way it is. Addicted to the things that have become second nature. Addicted to doing them in the same order, addicted to doing them right, especially if it just happens that you can do them easily, too."

Thoughts on Walt originally appeared on BuriedInPrint as part of a discussion which included Margaret Sweatman's Mr. Jones. ( )