Layman's Report cover art

Layman's Report

Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Layman's Report

By: Eugene Marten
Narrated by: Raoul Bhaneja, Patrick Mcmanus, Ellora Patnaik, Pearle Harbour, David Ferry, Wesley French, John Fleming, Justin Miller, Zak Annette, Sonia Vaillant, Kathleen Jones, Jaclyn Gruenberger, Nathaniel McKenzie, Maureen Simpson
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

A disturbing, darkly funny fictionalization of the life of Fred A. Leuchter, the garage tinkerer turned execution authority who became a darling of the neo-Nazi movement, and subject of the Errol Morris documentary, Mr. Death.

He comes to fix your photocopier, but really, Fred’s an inventor. At night, he goes to work. He has goals, ambitions, and when offered the task of building a better electric chair, he jumps at the chance. People have to die—he believes in the occasional necessity of evil—but what if we could kill them more humanely?

A death specialist, first in his field but forever under-appreciated, he’s charmed when a new generation of fascists come calling for his expertise. A Holocaust denier is on trial in Toronto—could Fred prove the gas chambers never existed?

Newspapers descend. Talking heads have their say. A documentarist makes a film. Everyone will know his name, though some things society will simply not abide. Dishonoured, discredited, disgraced. But Fred’s work does not stop, and the world may yet be reminded of the dangerous truth that some men are driven by forces far more powerful than shame.

First published in 2013, this is the updated and definitive edition of Eugene Marten’s chilling masterwork of transformational historical fiction.
Genre Fiction Historical Literary Fiction Psychological Thriller & Suspense

Critic reviews

“I am so, so grateful that Eugene Marten's writing exists. Nobody else writes like he does. What a shame! Layman's Report is full of the most strange, beautiful sentences. Marten is unafraid to look directly at the brutal things people do, but there is so much empathy lurking underneath this, too. He is a truly exceptional, one of a kind, talent.”
—Rachel Connolly, author of Lazy City

"However Eugene Marten does what he does with language is from another world. You think about the end of things, of all life, at every turn of phrase. It's not just what he renders in his characters, but how well he constructs the bleakness of the consequences the narrator faces. Like a chiaroscuro painting, Marten gently reveals what the light touches, but barely. What remains is the darkness of the story, and that is what draws the reader in."
—Elle Nash, author of Deliver Me

Layman’s Report is a propulsive and dazzling novel—Eugene Marten’s sculpted sentences captivate with their cadence and striking imagery. Fred Junior, an eccentric inventor of death devices turned Holocaust denier and victim of his own vanity, is one of the most enigmatic characters I have encountered in contemporary fiction.”
—Babak Lakghomi, author of South
No reviews yet