Rupert Holmes’s Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide is hugely, hugely enjoyable. Many of us have worked for someone who is deeply unpleasant, manipulative and we know the organisation, indeed, the world, would be a much nicer place without them. The scenario is that Guy McMasters founded the Conservatory for the Applied Arts, a highly expensive school that teaches homicide. The book follows the journey of three students, contemporaries at the Conservatory. We see why they were driven to want to kill their victim (as the title discloses, each victim is the student’s employer) and thus make the world a better place; their time learning at the Conservatory; and then their attempt at their graduation (aka the attempted murder of their employer). The book is supposedly written by the dean of the faculty as a textbook / advertisement for the course.

This means we know who the (attempting) murderer is; who the victim is; and what the motive is. The remaining questions are: (a) will they succeed; and (b) how will they do it? Given that they have been trained in the art of, ah, “deletion”, we expect them to avoid leaving clues and to demonstrate a certain artistic flair. And, oh, they do so well. Their planning and preparation is exemplary.

I almost cried when I finished the book, like a small child whose sweets are all eaten and there are no more. You can tell the author had as much fun writing it as I did reading it. Here are a couple of one-liners just from the Foreword:

“It is important to remember Kipling, if only because none of us are ever likely to meet anyone else called Rudyard.”

“[…] a hymn of thanks was sung by indentured servants across the farmland – from serf to turf, as it were.”

The author’s characterisation is spot on – I could almost see the people (both the evil victims and the heroic students. Some of the chapters are extracts from one student’s journal and the voice is very well done indeed. The plot proceeds briskly and with light-touch humour – there aren’t many laugh out loud moments, but there are plenty of smile-inducing passages that brightened my day. I do hope that the author writes more books – I shall certainly look out for any.

I have one tiny quibble: a cricket pitch is not oval.

#MurderYourEmployerTheMcMastersGuidetoHomicide #NetGalley

Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide by Rupert Holmes
Publication day 21 February 2023
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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4 stars
Thank you to NetGalley and Headline for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
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The McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts is a luxurious, clandestine college dedicated to the fine art of murder where earnest students study how best to “delete” their most deserving victim. To gain admission, a student must have an ethical reason for erasing someone who deeply deserves a fate no worse (nor better) than death.
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This is going to sound weird to say this about a book that deals with murder... But this was delightful!

You follow the story of Cliff, Gemma and Doria whilst they are students at McMasters and when they go about carrying out their "deletions" (because calling them "murders" is just too uncouth.)

I would call this a cosy mystery, although you already know the murderers and their "targets" (because calling them "victims" would be too sentimental.) But this has the same lightness, humour and wit.
The murder plots were clever and twisty, I liked the characters a lot and there were some really pretty illustrations of the McMasters Conservatory and its surroundings.

This was surprisingly wholesome and I had a lovely and fun time reading it 😊
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I would like to thank Netgalley and Headline for an advance copy of Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide, the first novel to feature the McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts, its staff and alumni, set in an unknown location in the postwar period.

The McMasters Conservatory is a place like no other school of learning as it is dedicated to teaching its students how to get away with murder, although deletion is the preferred term. The location is a secret, even to its students and the graduating thesis is the perfect deletion of one’s target.

I found Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide to be a mixed bag of good and not so good. It follows three students, Cliff, Gemma and Dulcie as they navigate the campus experience and set about their deletions and is told in various ways, straightforward narrative, Cliff’s journal, student appraisals and comments and animadversions from the Dean, Harbinger Harrow.

The novel is funny, from the absurd concept of McMasters to the situations the students find themselves in. It is also very clever in its conceptualisation of both McMasters and the way the deletions are carried out. On a more sour note I loathed Harbinger Harrow’s tone which is smug and self satisfied. I assume that I was supposed to feel like that, so kudos to the author for getting a rise, but it spoiled my fun. I also think that the novel is too long, in that all the detail blocks some of the momentum.

The novel mostly concentrates on Cliff’s experience at McMasters. He is the only student who didn’t actually choose to go there, so his experience is slightly different, not least that the Dean takes a special interest in his “scholarship” student. There are lessons to be learned, including avoiding death, all of which are amusing to the reader. Once the students are ready to complete their thesis the narrative switches between the three characters as they try to follow the McMasters’ precepts and delete their targets, in all cases their employers. There is twist upon twist in these extremely complicated and clever plans. Do they work? Well, that’s for you to find out, but I think the moral of the story is be careful what you wish for.

McMasters students are there because they have one target in mind, so they are not budding serial killers, with one exception who should have failed the screening. The author makes it sound reasonable, but I think that they are all psychopaths in thinking that murder is the answer (when in one ironic case it definitely isn’t). Cliff, Gemma and Dulcie are nice, pleasant people, apart from their fixation on killing their employer. I suppose that adds to the absurdity.

Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide is a smart, clever, inventive read that I can recommend as something different.

This was such an interesting book to read. Following three students as they attempt to pass their thesis and graduate made for an exciting tale which was moderately paced with enough twists that kept it interesting and not obvious that all would pass.

Learning about each of the students and their work related problems gave this story a depth that I wasn't expecting. The main set of characters are well drawn and the locations we were allowed to know about were given enough detail that it was easy to keep the brain images flowing nicely as the book progressed.

I did enjoy the "after the credits" scene!

The murder pins have my heart. Have you ever thought the world would be a better place without some people in it? How about a school to learn how to do it? This book drew me in from the first page and the last page left me wanting more. This was a delightful book!