Don’t leave this book—Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide—lying around casually at work. Your boss might get the wrong idea.

Now that it’s safely on your night table at home, or on the end table next to your easy chair, you can safely savor the delights of this fascinating novel. (Yes, it’s a novel.) First of all, admire the intricacies of the gorgeous cover. Yes, I know, you can’t judge the book, etc., etc., but in this case the cover tells you a lot. Who or what is McMasters? Why the upside-down ankh symbols in two of the corners? Why is it Volume One? And what about Naomi?

Next, read the book, every word of it. Author Rupert Holmes didn’t write a fluffy novel that you can skim, for you’ll miss all the dry jokes and the hidden allusions if you do. Be conscious of the context: it takes place back in the ’50s (important! like everything else) at the McMasters Conservatory, which will keep reminding you of Hogwarts without the four houses and without wizardry and other fantasy elements. Also, its students are adults, not kids. Also, it’s not in Scotland but in an Undisclosed Location, which you keep hoping will be revealed by the end of the book. Also, the school’s goal is not to teach students witchcraft and how to defeat the Bad Guys but to teach them…well…what the title suggests. Actually, it’s not just murdering your employer but anyone else who might need “deleting” (the genteel word for “murder” used at the conservatory). There is plenty of tension, plenty of suspense, despite the humor. Who are the good guys here? You’ll have to read it to find out—all the way to the end.

Will there be a Volume Two? Who knows?

Categories: Books