Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide: THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

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Cliff Iverson is our main character who, after failing to murder his despicable boss is whisked away by parties unknown to The McMasters Conservatory of the Applied Arts. One can’t test-fire a shove and trace it back to its origin, there’s no entry wound revealing its angle, nor does it leave telltale residue. Like, if you run a murder school, I don't think putting so much emphasis on whether a person deserves to die actually serves as any kind of moral absolution. My intended victim was looking down the tunnel, impatient for the arrival of the train that would kill him. The McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts - a luxurious, clandestine college dedicated to the fine art of murder where earnest students study how best to "delete" their most deserving victim.

After all, when the behavior of another person leaves you no choice but to kill them, their murder is simply involuntary suicide. Reaching the book's conclusion felt tedious, but I pushed through if only to see who Iverson's mysterious benefactor was. It felt a bit gimmicky and it took a while until I realized there was actually a story here, and not an actual guide (a tweak in the description could help). Also, sometimes it got too wordy and technical, which had some charm and merit but it also caused a reader to feel tossed out of the imaginary world and forced into a sense of. Who hasn’t wondered for a split second what the world would be like the object of your affliction ceased to exist?

Meaning it's mainly just characters describing a lot of what happens around them (hence the massive amounts of details describing A LOT of things), instead of them describing themselves, their character or their feelings. We are introduced to our main character Cliff Iverson when he attempts unsuccessfully to kill his horrible boss. The sergeant produced a half-pint bottle of Early Times from his hip pocket and topped off the tumbler’s unknown liquid with a generous slug of the bourbon. Scattered atop them were a litter of American Communist Party pamphlets laid out for my peers to see, as if the parking lot was hosting a rummage sale. Who hasn't wondered for a split second what the world would be like the object of your affliction ceased to exist?

Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide is an original and fun story, and the narrators definitely add to the listening experience. Once inside, I threaded my way through a maze of haberdashery display tables and entered a portal leading to the men’s changing rooms. Recommending this to older fans of Lemony Snicket, Trenton Lee Stewart, and Pseudonymous Bosch, and to those looking to immerse themselves in morbid whimsies. I had fun finding out everyone's motivations, and the side characters felt fleshed out as well as the main cast, with Doria definitely taking the number one spot in my heart (sorry Cliff).

His first novel, Where the Truth Lies, was nominated for a Nero Wolfe award for Best American Mystery Novel, was a Booklist Top Ten Debut Novel, and became a motion picture starring Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon.