Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide
Engineer Cliff Iverson’s boss must die.
The man has changed Cliff’s designs to a new airplane such that the craft is likely to crash and kill innocent people. When no one listens to Cliff’s warnings, he decides the only way to fix the situation and save thousands of lives is to end a single one. When his first attempt to kill his boss goes horribly wrong, Cliff finds himself whisked away to the McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts, where students are taught the fine art of “deleting” someone without being caught.
Set in an unspecified year in the 1950s (and an unspecified place, as McMasters’ location is unknown even to the students on campus), the novel is written as a guide for non-students using Cliff and classmates Gemma Lindley and Dulcie Mown as case studies. Readers follow each of the three students as they advance in their coursework and prepare for their thesis: the deletion of their irredeemable employers. The catch? A failed thesis means expulsion not only from McMasters but from life itself. And Dean Harbinger Harrow lets readers know early on that one of the protagonists will not succeed.
This newest offering from Holmes is dark humor at its absolute best. The mystery of who will fail their thesis will keep readers turning pages, and the wordplay will keep them snorting with laughter. The three protagonists are eminently relatable, especially to anyone who’s ever had a horrible boss. With terrific twists and surprises and a surprisingly heartwarming ending (followed by an unexpected laugh-out-loud epilogue), this irreverent piece of dark academia reminds everyone why Holmes is a multi-award winner. Highly recommended.
