Some people take a long time to figure out the easy lessons in life.

Such is the story of Walter Lutz, the main character in Fred G. Leebron’s “Six Figures.” The novel is about the life of Walter, his wife and their two children trying to make a living in the cut-throat town of Charlotte, North Carolina. When Walter’s wife is attacked and left for dead, he must prove his innocence to the police, to society and to his family.

The main character in this novel is unlikeable. It leaves the reader hoping that the police will permanently throw him in prison, whether or not he actually committed the crime. The character was unrealistic, uncaring and unloving. Any time spent reading this book will be spent in awe that a woman- any woman- would put up with the tantrums thrown by this adult male.

It took until completing the book and some pondering to figure out where the title of the book came from. The title comes from Walter’s main objective in life- to make money, and a lot of it. This seems to be the only thing that motivates Walter.

Walter’s arch-enemy in the book, his mother-in-law, makes six figures per year. Walter’s bail is set at six figures. The cost of the house that Walter and his wife want to buy is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The amount of money that Walter puts his non-profit organization into debt- yep, in the six figures.

Clever? Not really.

The attack of Walter’s wife, the main plot of the story, took more than 100 pages to get to and the book was almost half over by that point. It forced the reader to learn more about Walter’s work troubles and the excitements of buying a house, neither of which were extremely important to the plot, or very interesting.

To be fair, the author had one good idea with the plot of the story. Everything else just seemed to get in the way, such as building his characters’ personalities. There are twists in the plot left out in the open that the author could have chosen to take but opted not to. This will cause the reader to feel as if the author got tired of writing this dreadful book and decided to end it the easy way—suddenly and un-dramatically.

Walter does end up learning his lesson by the end of the book—in fact, he tells the lesson to his whiny four-and-a-half year old. The lesson, and the theme of the book, can be summed up in one word—chill.