Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide

Published in 2023, Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide is the first of a forthcoming series by the Edgar Award winner Rupert Holmes. Written in the form of a self-help instruction manual by a fictional Harbinger Harrow, the dean of McMaster’s Conservatory for the Applied Arts, the book reveals secrets of the elite school where the sole curriculum consists of how to commit the perfect murder. The novel follows the education of three potential “deletists” from the 1950s—unwitting Cliff Iverson, extortion victim Gemma Lindley, and the film star Doria Maye—as they go through their education and in so doing instruct the reader how to follow in their footsteps and learn from their mistakes.

This guide refers to the Avid Reader Press, 2023 edition.

Content Warning: This text deals with dark themes including suicide and features scenes of murder and sexual behavior. The source text also contains anti-LGBTQ+ bias, particularly anti-transgender biases.

Plot Summary

Dean Harbinger Harrow congratulates the reader on picking up this guide. The guide is based on the curriculum of McMaster’s Conservatory of the Applied Arts and addresses the topic of how to commit the perfect murder. To facilitate the reader’s learning, the Dean will provide journal entries by the student Cliff Iverson and narrate the experiences of two other students.

Cliff thinks he has committed the perfect murder of Merrill Fiedler, his former boss at Woltan Industries, a company that makes airplanes. Fiedler had previously used his position of power to extort employees into sex and other deeds. He was also endangering lives by making cuts to airplane production that would certainly cause Woltan’s new planes to crash. His actions led to the suicide of a young woman whom Cliff liked and to the death of Cliff’s surrogate uncle, Jack Horvath, after Fiedler fired both him and Cliff for addressing the new safety concerns. His murder attempt, however, was unsuccessful and, according to McMasters faculty, comically bad. Cliff is immediately confronted by two McMasters employees posing as police officers who give him the choice of jail or McMasters.

After a long trip during which he was unconscious and blindfolded, Cliff arrives at the school. The Dean tells him he has an anonymous sponsor who is paying for his education. The Dean shows Cliff around, introducing him to various students including Dulcie Mown (who is actually the famous actress Doria Maye), bumbling Cubby Terhune, arrogant Simeon Sampson, and extortion victim Gemma Lindley, who Cliff is immediately drawn to despite her ignoring him. He is told that the only way he can leave the school is if he graduates or fails. Failing would result in his deletion by McMasters. Despite this, Cliff tries to escape, barging into an operating room in what he thinks is a hospital but is actually a set created for student practice. He sheepishly joins the class, watching “Nurse” Gemma speak about how she’d delete the patient but also express that she wouldn’t do it because of the negative fallout for the doctors. He also hears the contrasting tactic of the student acting as the surgeon, Jud Helkampf, who doesn’t care if his deletion kills others. He is reprimanded by the faculty for having broken one of the Four Enquires, or rules, of McMasters deletions—no innocent people should be harmed. Cliff attempts to engage Gemma in conversation on the way back to campus during which she reveals she has already killed someone but then rebuffs him for Helkampf’s company. Back in his room, Cliff finds Dean Harrow who goes through the Four Enquiries with Cliff. Cliff decides to commit to his education and delete Fiedler after graduating with a McMasters education.

For his sponsor, Cliff reports in a journal about the details of his day. Cliff takes a job in the kitchens for pocket money, learning tips about poisoning from the chef and discovering that everything, including social situations, turn into lessons on how to delete one’s target. He becomes popular with the students for playing a successful deletion prank on his arrogant peer, Simeon Sampson, though Gemma continues to be cool toward him.

The faculty express concern for Gemma’s method of deletion and have assigned her to be friends with Helkampf to illustrate the impossibility of her idea of becoming friends with her extortioner. Dulcie is inspired by a faculty member’s rules to create ignominy to encourage the police to pursue the murderer with less vigor, and Cliff discovers a small castle on the far side of a deep chasm hidden in the woods of the campus.

The semester Track Meet, where students are assigned to track and falsely delete others, results in Cliff attempting to save Gemma. Helkampf attempts to actually kill Gemma at the castle. As he climbs across the ravine, however, Helkampf burns the rope, and Cliff falls into the crevice, resulting in the majority of students thinking he has died. Helkampf is deleted for his behavior. Cliff doesn’t die, as the entire mountain is an elaborate set for teaching students, and he falls onto a crash pad. He is deemed ready for graduation and immediately taken to the outside world. Dulcie and Gemma also graduate, though the faculty are worried about Gemma’s success.

Cliff sets his target up for deletion by using Fiedler’s vanity to lure him into a gambling scandal and a final confrontation in which Fiedler murders himself by trying to kill Cliff first. Dulcie creates an elaborate deletion complete with multiple disguises and gives her target a final chance before clubbing him to death with his own Oscar. Gemma finds her plan was as bad as the faculty cautioned and has to improvise with a safe cracking and a falling cinderblock. At the very last second, her extortioner reveals she is pregnant, and Gemma throws herself in front of the falling block to save the woman and her baby.

Cliff discovers that his friend Jack’s widow, Liliana Horvath, sponsored him at McMasters. Cliff otherwise finds life difficult, as his reason for living has gone. Gemma has survived and expects to be deleted for failing but is instead offered a place at McMasters to teach morality. Dulcie asks to return to McMasters as her new boss has equally abhorrent plans for her career but isn’t permitted and so is left considering yet another murder. When Gemma returns to campus with her mother, she is elated to see Cliff alive and also now a professor. They are free to acknowledge their feelings for each other, and Cliff feels he is truly home.

Dean Harrow closes the novel with a Postscript, hoping the reader has learned McMasters values and techniques, noting some of the faculty think he has endangered the school by revealing its existence. His narrative breaks off mid-sentence, suggesting that the publishing of the book has resulted in his own deletion.